Well, here we are at the end of 30 Days of Blog. It was fun, but I must admit that this turned out to be more difficult than I initially thought. Just finding the time to write was enough of a challenge, but finding interesting topics to write about was also difficult at times. I was trying not to sacrifice quality for quantity, but I'm not sure I was entirely successful over the course of the entire month. I'll leave that for the reader to decide. I will no longer be posting everyday, but going forward, I would like to continue posting once or twice a week. I hope you have enjoyed, and continue to enjoy, reading.

When Josie was only a week or so old, I never would have guessed that we would have gotten a picture like this. Noah just wasn't into the whole big brother role, and his actions toward her were what you could only call agressive. But he has mellowed quite a bit, and now he even seems to like her, and her face lights up whenever she sees him. I know it won't last forever, but it sure is sweet while it does.

[This is the third article in a series.]

The timing of the Supreme Court's decision this week is fortuitous, because it serves to underscore the crucial point of Phase III, and that is that keeping and bearing arms is in individual right because personal safety is an individual responsibility. A person's unalienable right to self-defense (using whatever arms they should happen to choose), as acknowledged by the Second Amendment, may be voluntarily delegated to others, however, it is important that every citizen understand that the responsibility for their own safety and security is not automatically assumed by any other party.

If you want to be safe walking down the street, you must take the proper precautions. If you want your home to be safe from invasion you must take steps to ensure that security. If you want your family and loved ones to be safe from harm, you must be prepared to defend them in any situation. These points will be hammered home to everyone throughout Phases I and II, but they cannot be emphasized enough. Our population has become not only complacent, allowing the responsibility for their safety to be assumed by others (police), but taught to be afraid of the very means they must be use to defend themselves and their liberties (guns).

When Mel Gibson's movie The Patriot was released in 2000, there was some furor in the press over the scenes depicting Gibson's young children in the movie using their muskets to fight the British Army. The argument being that this is not the proper message to be sending to our children. That we, as a society, do not want our kids to be learning at an early age how to handle and use weaponry. Futhermore, it was hard for some to believe that these scenes were based on reality -- they cannot fathom a world in which 10-year-olds were capable marksmen, taught to not only accurately place a shot in the center of mass of their enemies, but also taught to safely handle their weapons to prevent the accidental injury or death of their kin. How could children be this responsible? Children are capable of many amazing things when we set our expectations of them sufficiently high. And, most importantly, responsible children grow into responsible adults.

It is this defect that education campaigns during Phases I and II will strive to correct -- multiple generations of people who were never taught to use or respect guns, so they've grown into adults who fear guns, or disrespect their destructive power. These hoplophobes have convinced everyone else that guns are dangerous and unnecessary, when the exact opposite is true, and once this brainwashing has been reversed in a large enough number of people, the task of dismantling the government's defense infrastructure will not seem as daunting.

During Phase III, all property of the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security will be auctioned off to the highest bidder. Private protection agencies will have been gearing up for Phase III for forty years at this point. They will be in best position to bid on all of armaments and other hardware of the Armed Forces and other federal law enforcement agencies. All of it will be gradually sold and the responsibilities for security, both personal security and that of our borders, will be gradually transitioned to the private sector during this phase.

Revolution complete - 2076

Americans will, for the first time in centuries, celebrate their freedom from oppressive government during our nation's tricentennial. The federal government will no longer exist and the process can be expected to repeat for state and local governments, as needed.

Fridays are the hardest. Whew. When I accepted this challenge, I wouldn't have guessed that one day would be harder than the rest, but Fridays have turned out to be more difficult to find something to write about than the remaining days of the week. So yeah, I'm cheating. It's actually Saturday and I'm pre-dating this entry. And it's not really about anything except the difficulty of finding something interesting to write about every day. My hat's off to the talented bloggers out there who manage to crank out a quality product day after day. Yeah, I'm cheating. So sue me.

I don't know which is more disturbing to me, the fact that the Supreme Court had to weigh in on the Second Amendment at all, or that it was only a 5-4 decision in favor of it. I was fully prepared for it to go the other way. I mean, the Court has not been shy about showing its disdain for fundamental rights, such as property rights, in their Kelo v. New London decision, for example. Since we no longer have a right to personal property, it would not have surprised me at all if they had moved to take away our individual right to self-defense as well.

So, now the residents of the District of Columbia can once again have an efficient means of protection in their homes again. It will be interesting to see if repealing the handgun ban in the District has any effect on crime statistics. One would expect home invasions, for instance, to drop considerably. The next step will be to remove any impediments to the citizens carrying their weapons with them, thereby reducing crime rates overall.

Thank you SCOTUS, for acknowledging a right that all of us already had!

Is America condemned by global warming? Or maybe some new terrorist threat? Is the high price of oil going to drive us to destruction? No, America is doomed because of this young lady (watch the video in its entirety). Whitney Houston used to sing that she believed that children are our future. Despite the inevitability of that statement, it really is true. And if Stephanie Woods (and her friend) is our future, America has already failed.

More specifically, parents have failed in their duty to their children to teach them right from wrong. Stephanie Woods clearly does not grasp the concept, and she is probably not alone among members of her generation. What happens to this nation in ten years, or twenty years, when Stephanie Woods is in a position of authority? Or worse, is a parent herself, and raises another generation with even less respect for the rights of other people? One of the YouTube commenters said that these two girls should be sterilized. I can't say that I disagree.

If you came of age during the 70s and 80s, and had cable TV, you undoubtedly watched Carlin at Carnegie. Probably many times. I know I did. I think I had the entire thing memorized at one time in my life. Everyone has certain pop culture icons that influence their childhood, and for me one of the biggest was George Carlin. I can't explain it, but I always felt a special connection to him. Needless to say, the news of his passing this week saddened me -- moreso than I would have expected. We will miss you, George.

[This is the second article in a series.]

Public property is a paradox. How can something be owned simultaneously by everyone and no one? In order to avoid this logical inconsistency, as well as the Tragedy of the Commons, and the staggering costs of the endless bureaucracies needed to administer it, public property must be eliminated.

During this phase, all land and property currently "owned" by the federal government will be auctioned off to the highest bidder (or returned to its rightful owner). This includes all interstate highways, Post Offices, National Parks, and all land currently held by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in the western States. It also includes federal territories such as Guam, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands. It does not include military bases and the District of Columbia - these will be sold at auction in Phase III.

All public schools (from kindergarten to universities) receiving federal funding will be closed, dismantled and/or sold at auction during this phase. This includes the Department of Education and all of its employees. The People will once again have to take direct responsibility for the education of themselves and their children.

Private companies will be the most likely customer to buy schools. In most cases, schools will be converted in place to private schools, with the free market determining the cost of tuition. Teachers currently employed by the government-run schools that meet the minimum requirements of the private schools will likely not lose their jobs.

Post offices will most likely be sold to private delivery companies (FedEx, UPS, DHL, etc.), but may be sold to anyone with the means to purchase them.

National parks could be sold to private environmental organizations whose focus is conservation, such as the World Wildlife Fund or the Sierra Club. Admission to these parks would no longer be free, but any fees charged for maintenance and upkeep would be subject to free market forces (and therefore kept low) and could also be subsidized by the charitable donations already collected by these organizations.

BLM land will be given, free of charge, to any rancher/farmer who can show compelling evidence to a jury that their continuous use and stewardship of a given parcel of land should reasonably confer ownership. All other land will be auctioned to the highest bidder, while residents of all Federal Territories will be given their independence and granted full rights and title to their homelands.

We bought the Cars - Mater-National game for our Wii mainly because it is my son Noah's favorite movie and I thought he'd enjoy watching the game as much as watching the movie. I was not wrong. He loves it.

But I must confess that I like it too, and it's a very well executed game. The graphics are extremely well done, the story that guides you throughout is imaginative and well-written, and the game play itself is very good. The cars handle in a realistic way (for the most part) and the controls are intuitive.

I especially like the fact that certain areas of the game become unlocked after you achieve certain milestones and that results in barricades with "Road Closed" signs disappearing from roads in the game, allowing you to explore new areas of the map. I also like that time progresses as you go through phases of the game, so sometimes you are driving during the day, and sometimes at night. Overall it's a great game and I would strongly recommend it, even if you don't have kids!

We hosted a little shindig today for the whole family so everyone could meet the newborn babies -- our daughter Josie and my cousin Laura's daughter Becca. We had a sprinkler set up, Stomp Rockets, and of course Noah's Hummer is always a hit. I think everyone had a good time. A few pictures from the festivities are in my album.

Looks like I might have spoken a bit prematurely last month when I said that the end was in sight. Since the contractor has been negligent in watering the new sod that they laid down in our backyard, most of it has turned brown, and I'm not sure it will come back from that. I called MSD about it on Monday when it first appeared, and they sent two rubes out to water the dead grass. They then proceeded to leave our gate open when they left. So MSD got another call about that. I really don't see why treating your customer with respect is so difficult.

There was a brief period of Internet history after bandwidth was sufficiently plentiful, but before YouTube came along, when email servers everywhere were bludgeoned by the weight of funny video traffic. You remember these, right? Enormous attachments that clogged your inbox, most of which you didn't have the proper codecs to even watch, and of the ones you did, most were not funny? Yeah, those.

But among the chaff, there were a few classics. One of which I just referenced in my entry about Linux. But hunting that one down (on YouTube, of course) made me remember another one that used to make me laugh. Who remembers Intellitoast!?! It's STREAMING!! Classic.

I've discovered fellow St. Louis blogger Brian J. Noggle appears to share my sentiments where John Haasis is concerned. I'm glad I'm not the only one who recognized his statement as being outrageous. Hi Brian, I'm looking forward to reading more of your stuff. I certainly wish I had the free time to read and write that you apparently do.

In October of last year, I wrote about St. Louis County's plan to create a series of monopolies, where previously we had a free market. They provided a list of reasons they were doing this, none of which made any logical or financial sense, all of which were beyond the scope of the government's authority.

Today I read an excellent article in St. Louis Magazine. I was completely flabbergasted by a comment made by John Haasis, who is the manager of the Solid Waste Management Program for St. Louis County, so I wrote him the following letter:

If I receive a response, I will post it here.

Look, I'm a software guy, okay? I've been banging around on computers since my first TRS-80 that my dad bought in 1982. I'm a software engineer for the world's largest aerospace company. And I'm here to tell you that as far as computer operating systems go, we as a civilization peaked with DOS. Microsoft Windows sucks. We all somehow intuitively know this, but we've been in denial for twenty years because until recently there just weren't that many alternatives.

I have a little bit of experience with Unix/Linux. I had a Silicon Graphics workstation on my desk for a few years. I played around with an early version of Red Hat. I even downloaded the original Ubuntu and loaded it on an old Toshiba laptop just for kicks. My opinion back then was that a lot of progress had been made, but that we still weren't there yet. The Windows-like GUIs were pretty good, but the application software support still wasn't there.

So recently, after seeing the slick Xandros load on my Eee, I decided to give Linux another shot and tried to install the latest versions of both Ubuntu and Kubuntu on a home server that I'm setting up. You know what? Linux sucks too, albeit for different reasons.

It's an extremely difficult operating system to configure right out of the box. There, I said it. We all know it's true, but everybody seems to be in denial about this too. But the complexity of Linux is a well known punchline, as you can see here. That video is several years old, but nothing has really changed. Despite the open source community's best efforts, Linux is still cumbersome, buggy, and frankly, not ready for primetime. Or at least not ready to expand their market much past the legions of nerds who have nothing better to do than "check your version dependencies."

Now I know that many of the Linux faithful will attack me for saying this, so I'm going to offer this little challenge. Point me to a Linux distro that 1) installs from a single disc (either CD or DVD), 2) includes both VNC and Samba right out of the box, and 3) won't take me to "sudo pico" hell trying to "config it" and I'll take back everything I just said. Any takers?

I spent today catching up. Catching up on work around the house. Catching up on writing. But most importantly, catching up on some serious play time with my little man. He is a bundle of energy, and always ready to play catch or play cars, but today it was Stomp Rockets. Simply put, it was a good day.

We took Noah and Josie to the circus today. Noah got the biggest kick out of it, he was so charged up during the show. He kept clapping and bouncing up and down in his seat. Josie, of course, slept through it.

The circus has really gone high-tech. The lighting and sound was really excellent, and the special effects (pyrotechnics and big screen TVs) were more than I expected. It is definitely more than just elephants walking around in a circle these days. But the animals are still a central part of the show, as are the acrobats and daredevils. It really is an impressive show. I'd recommend it, and you'll especially enjoy it through your kids' eyes.

[This is the first article in a series.]

A bloodless revolution is not without pain. Any time you take something away that people have grown accustomed to they will suffer as a result. Just how much will be determined by each individual's ability to adapt to change. But, assuming that a revolution can be achieved peacefully, the goal should be to gradually transition systems from old to new to minimize the suffering as much as possible. During this phase, this goal will be paramount, as it is well understood that treating people humanely is more likely to result in success.

All so-called "entitlement" spending by the federal government will be halted at the end of this phase. Families on welfare, or using food stamps, AFDC, etc. will have roughly one generation to ween themselves and their children from the government teat, and find jobs for themselves. Those people within 20 years of death (generally, anyone over the age of 60) need do nothing as their benefits will continue until the end of this period, but those who are just beginning a life of dependency would do well to find other sources of income during this period. Government employees who have made a career of administering this wealth redistribution will also need to seek employment elsewhere. Their jobs will disappear at the end of this period.

Much of this phase will also be devoted to educating the people about the upcoming changes in Phases II and III. Private schools and home-schooling organizations will start preparing the public for closing of all public schools in Phase II. Private organizations such as JPFO would begin a massive campaign to inform and convince Americans that they are responsible for their own safety and security, in preparation for Phase III. This education is necessary to couteract the effects of decades of indoctrination that most people have received as part of the standard public education curriculum.

In 1776, one of the self-evident truths that Thomas Jefferson included in the unanimous Declaration was "That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." Friends and neighbors, the time has come for the Second American Revolution.

It should be obvious to anyone paying attention that the train that is our government left the tracks a long time ago. For those who have not been paying attention, God bless you. We will allow you to go on living your lives blissfully unaware of the travesty of self-governance all around you. All we ask in return is please, for your own safety, do not get in our way as we begin this important work, for who among us could read Jefferson's long list of usurpations and not find in today's government a parallel for virtually every one of them?

Some will read these words and think them folly. For you I have only the words of Samuel Adams: "If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom — go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!"

Others will hear the truth of these words ringing in their ears, but despair at the daunting task of slaughtering a 230-year-old beast, with a litter of millions suckling at her grotesque teats, and believe themselves unequal to the task. To you I have only Jefferson's words: "It behooves our citizens to be on their guard, to be firm in their principles, and full of confidence in themselves. We are able to preserve our self-government if we will but think so."

Still others are ready to join the fray, but cannot see a path forward that will assure success. For even if we were to succeed at abolishing the current government, we might not achieve our ultimate goal if in instituting a new government we fail to make things better than they are now. A revolution without a plan for new government is a hollow victory indeed.

Furthermore, a revolution that sacrifices lives is of little value if the same ends could have been achieved without the spilling of blood. So a worthy plan should assume that it can be executed within the constraints of the current government, resulting in bloodshed only as a means of last resort, when all lesser means have failed. However, Jefferson understood that "the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants," so there is certainly a time for bloodshed. Let us all pray that we have not yet surpassed that point of no return.

In short, overthrowing a government is easy. Replacing it with something better is the hard part. In honor of Flag Day this weekend, and all of the things that our flag used to stand for, this is the first in a series of essays outlining a modest plan for accomplishing the latter.

Phase I - Dismantling the Welfare State (2008-2025)

Phase II - The End of Public Property (2025 - 2045)

Phase III - Homeland Security (2045 - 2075)

If you've seen my story archive, you know that I collect stories documenting the misconduct of police officers. While this story doesn't really qualify as misconduct, it does serve to illustrate another potential reason why cops suck.

It seems the New London, Connecticut, police department doesn't like their officers to be too smart. They give all of their applicants a standardized IQ test, and if you score too high, like Robert Jordan, you are rejected. Now IQ tests are not a terribly accurate predictor of a given person's mental faculties, but if they are going to go to the trouble of administering the test, you would think they would set a minimum score criteria, not a maximum score.

I can only speculate on the reasons behind this policy: smart people ask too many questions. If you want someone to blindly follow your orders, you are better off hiring less intelligent folk. And if you know that your department is, from time to time, engaged in activities that raise certain legal and/or ethical questions, you don't want a precinct full of geniuses second-guessing your command. Perhaps my bias in this area is showing, but I really can't think of any other explanation, can you?

The St. Louis Post Dispatch reported a couple of weeks ago about the new variable speed limit signs that have been installed along the 30 or so miles of Interstate 270, which is the main beltway surrounding the metropolitan area. The Missouri Department of Transportation wasted almost a million dollars installing these signs which are both ineffective and illegal.

The Federal Highway Traffic Safety Administration (which is, in itself, a monstrous waste of taxpayer money) issues a document called the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices and requires all states to adopt this manual into law as a prerequisite to receiving federal highway funds (also known as extortion). This means that the MUTCD is federal and state law and is applicable to every mile of public road in the United States. It clearly outlines two criteria for speed limit signs: 1) an engineering study must be performed and documented for every single sign that is erected, and 2) the numeric value that appears on the sign must represent the 85th percentile speed (as measured in the absence of any speed limit) of naturally flowing traffic, rounded up to the nearest 5-mile increment.

You only have to drive I-270 for 10 or 15 minutes to discover that the vast majority of motorists are traveling at 70-75mph. But do these variable speed limit signs reflect that reality, and comply with the law? No. As the Post story indicated, MODOT has set the signs at 60mph, and will adjust them as low as 40mph when warranted by conditions. Do they really believe that anyone is going to drive 40mph on a four-lane interstate highway?

Imposing an artificially low speed limit results in unsafe driving conditions as some people will obey it and others won't, which creates a dangerous speed differential within the flow of traffic. And studies have shown that it is not speed alone that causes accidents, it is dramatic differences in the speeds of vehicles sharing the same road that causes accidents. It is much safer to allow the drivers to choose their own speed based on their perceptions of the current driving conditions. In other words, no speed limit at all is safer than having a speed limit that can change at any given moment.

This is also a perfect example of an analog law that I wrote about a few days ago. Not only is there literally someone sitting there with their hand upon the dial, adjusting the law right before your very eyes, but there is an unimaginably costly infrastructure necessary to implement the law and provide for its enforcement.

The Post described this as an experiment. Well, it's an experiment that costs too much, is in violation of the law, and is potentially unsafe for St. Louis area drivers. It's an experiment we can live without.

As I mentioned previously, I was considering installing a photovoltaic system this year to offset some of our home energy costs. But the PV systems are still quite expensive. Even with net metering, it could take decades for a system to pay for itself, and as the fine folks at Missouri Solar Living pointed out to me, something close to 15% of your home energy costs is your water heater. So a much more economical way to save money is to replace your gas or electric water heater with a solar powered one. So that's what we're going to do. I will continue to post updates on this project, so stay tuned.

A month or so ago, there would have been no way that our daughter Josie would have passed out asleep on the floor this way. She was pretty fussy. No, strike that, she was uber fussy. Actually the word fussy is insufficient to the task of describing her. But we figured that was just how she was, and that we would have to learn to deal with it.

Then one day in May, she stopped eating. She was inconsolable. We tried everything. Finally our pediatrician directed us to take her to the emergency room. After a series of tests, looking for everything from a hair tourniquet to a lacerated cornea, her urine test came back with a bladder infection. We were staying the night at the emergency room.

They started her on broad-spectrum antibiotics. It took a couple of days to grow the culture and positively identify the bacteria. We were expecting it to be one of the usual suspects of internal infections, like E. Coli. But on the day we were anticipating bringing her home, the doctor dropped a bombshell on us. It was a nasty little bacteria called Enterobacter and it was going to require seven days of intravenous antibiotics to be sure we killed it all.

So, we did what any family of four does when they find out such news, we bought a Wii and hunkered down in our hospital room for another week. To make a long story short, our baby's fussiness was a result of the pain from her bladder infection. Now she is home and pain-free, and she is a completely different baby. We are very thankful to be getting to know our new daughter.

I cut my grass today, as I do most every weekend this time of year -- although I think it's been worse this year with the record rainfall that St. Louis has received -- and as I take the tractor another round, it gives me time to ponder things. Things like why do people waste their grass?

Let me explain. There is this cycle of waste that is promoted in suburbia. You pay a lot of money for a good lawn mower, then you pay for those nifty little yard waste bags, and extra to your trash service to haul away your yard waste, and that doesn't count the extra time you spend bagging your grass clippings and leaves. Then, you have to buy fertilizer to keep your yard well fed and you have to pay to water it to keep it looking green.

This doesn't even take into account the long term degradation of your soil because you take pounds and pounds of biomass out of your yard every year and wave goodbye as someone you paid to haul it away either turns it into mulch and resells it, or dumps it in a landfill somewhere.

Well, there is a very simple solution that will break this cycle of waste: buy a mulching mower. If you can't afford one, buy a mulching blade for your existing mower, and stop bagging your clippings. That's right, just let them fly. I know your yard won't have that golf course manicured look when you're done cutting, but who cares? Especially when you stop to consider that those clippings will fall in between the blades of grass, and provide a natural mulch that not only traps moisture (so you don't have to water your yard), but as it decays, it fertilizes the ground as well.

So say goodbye to the cost of yard waste bags and hauling, say goodbye to fertilizer, and say hello to extra money and extra time as well as a greener yard, both literally and ecologically.

When discussing individual rights, I like to borrow a concept from software engineering and say that human rights are digital in the sense that one either possesses them or they do not. All humans possess a right to property, a right to self-defense, and the right to freely contract, for example, while they do not possess a right to tell others how to live their lives, or a right to dictate how others use their property. So these rights are either a one (1) if you possess them, or a zero (0) if you don't -- they are digital.

Governments will, from time to time, attempt to convert one's rights into privileges by qualifying them, or restricting them in some way. This is equivalent to applying a potentiometer to your right, and turn it from a digital right to an analog one. Someone may, at their own discretion, dial your right down from a one (1) to a 0.99, say, imposing some small restriction on how you are allowed to exercise that right.

But a right that requires the permission or endorsement of someone else is not a right at all. It's a privilege. That's not to say that a privilege can't be legitimate, but for someone to call it a right is, at best, disingenuous, and, at worst, immoral.

So given that the only legitimate purpose of government is to protect the rights of the individual, and all government action occurs through the passage of laws, laws that protect the rights of the individual must be digital as well. That is, a law cannot restrict a right, or qualify it, thereby turning it into a privilege.

Some restrictions may seem completely reasonable on their face, but the logical problem with inserting a potentiometer into the mix is that someone (other than the person whose rights are being acted upon) must have their hand on that dial. Who is this person charged with watching the dials to ensure they are all set correctly? And, indeed, who watches the watcher to verify that they do their job?

This is, in a nutshell, what is wrong with our government. There are far too many analog laws, each of which require a whole host of attendants to ensure that the potentiometers are set at the proper level, and that they are enforced, and that the people setting the levels and doing the enforcement are properly supervised.

The easiest way to tell if a law is analog or digital is to look at its length and complexity. Digital laws are short and simple: do not murder other people, do not steal other people's stuff. Analog laws are long and complicated, like our tax code, for example. Another way to tell is by how much pain or inconvenience it causes you. For instance, if you find yourself standing in line at a government office for a long period of time in order to talk to someone behind the counter and give them money, then you can be sure that an analog law is the reason you are there.

As part of the digital revolution, let's not forget to upgrade our laws too. Analog is out, digital is in. And now that you know how to tell the difference, you can be on the lookout for those analog laws and avoid or ignore them.

It's only been a week since the season finale of my favorite show LOST, but I'm already having withdrawals. Season 4 was the best one so far, in my opinion, and I'm hooked all over again. It was touch and go there for a while. The show's producers made some poor decisions concerning the pacing of the show (starting with Season 2's preoccupation with "the hatch"), and have alienated a lot of their fans as a result, myself included. I was ready to write the show off after Season 3, so it's good that Season 4 was so strong (despite being interrupted by the writer's strike) or I would no longer be watching.

I'm still dismayed by their decision to deliver the final 48 episodes as three seasons of 16 episodes instead of the customary two seasons of 24 episodes. Decisions like this make it painfully obvious to viewers that TV is not entertainment, it's a business. Decisions are made to maximize profits, not to maximize the audience's satisfaction. I have a coworker who is a fan of the show, but only watches a season once it is released on DVD so that he can control the pace. I admire his discipline. I'm not sure I could do that.

By the way, if you are a fan of the show, but can't manage to remember the myriad of details and characters (and who could, unless you're some kind of freak?), be sure to check out the Lostpedia wiki. It is a fan reference without peer.

Attention all teachers! Remember this man's name and face, because many years from now, after the Department of Education has disappeared, and our country's education system has been completely dismantled, and you are out looking for a job, you will know who to blame. History will record that this is the man who divulged your dirty little secret.

Judge Walter Croskey, ruling on whether homeschooling parents were abusing their children, wrote the following in his decision:

Since then, the California 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals has agreed to reconsider its ruling, but the cat's already out of the bag. Even if the court reverses itself, and homeschooling parents in California are no longer considered outlaws, the true mission of our public education system has been revealed in all its splendor. That is a truly disturbing statement. The purpose of an education system is to teach loyalty to the state. Funny, I always thought the purpose of an education system was to educate.

John Taylor Gatto has written about this topic extensively, and I can give it no better treatment than he has in his many books and essays. He has made the point over and over that you cannot fix our nation's public schools because they are not broken. They do exactly what they were designed to do, which is to indoctrinate our youth with government-approved propaganda. It was just surprising to me to hear an Appellate Court judge of all people admit that the emperor has no clothes.

Teachers beware! Judge Croskey has outed you, and concerned parents have had their suspicions confirmed. From this point forward, it will no longer be so easy to hide your real agenda.

If you've ever been to AmIRight.com, you may have seen one of my favorite misheard song lyrics -- Creedence's "bad moon on the rise" in some people's ears turns into a "bathroom on the right."

Speaking of bathrooms, it's only taken six months, but our bathroom remodel is finally coming to an end. I got the room painted. Gray. Well, actually, no. It's not gray. They don't sell gray paint anymore. They sell "Pewter Mug" or "Porpoise." I blame the J.Crew catalog. At some point in the mid-90s, they stopped selling purple sweaters and started selling only "Eggplant" sweaters. It's been all downhill from there.

When I graduated college and started working full time, it was a bit of a shock initially. You never realize how much free time you have until it is gone. I thought I was busy in college. I was double-majoring, carrying a full load of classes, running a radio station, and I was a Resident Assistant in the dorm where I lived. It seemed like my days were pretty full. It wasn't until I started working 40 hour weeks that I realized how much time I had in college to simply goof off and do whatever I wanted.

When I made the commitment to having a wife and family, I knew that I would have even less free time. Finding a few minutes just to do something like writing this blog is a challenge. But the sacrifice of free time isn't as much of a shock because it happens so gradually, and as I look into my daughter's eyes as I write this, and she smiles up at me, I know it is all worth it.

One of my friends from college (who blogs at the curiously named site Numb Trolley Bus) has issued a challenge to his readers. Sure I'll give it a shot. I'll put my new toy to the test, and let's see if I can manage to blog every day in June, shall we?

I actually have a couple of topics that have been stacking up in the queue, so this will give me an oppportunity to clean house a little. See ya on the other side...