新年快乐
새해복많이받으세요
Happy Lunar New Year
Archives For January 2014
Its funny that these people jumping on the climate change bandwagon are declaring the debate over, yet they refused for the past decade to debate the issue. So until they actually have debate of the issue and quit labeling everyone who isn’t freaking out about the quintupled population of the polar bears as deniers I simply cannot trust their motives. Its one thing to wish for people to be environmentally more responsible. I don’t believe anyone will oppose doing his or her own bit for the planet. However what people do object to is this attempt to bring about detrimental changes such as Carbon taxes or Carbon currency which is essentially just attempts to give more control to scientists over fiscal policy. People get upset about the debate of climate change but it must take place if we are going to spend these billions of dollars in government grants (your own money). There’s an uneasy amount of thinkspeak and collusion amongst scientists when it comes to these issues on climate change.
More empty promises and politicians showing their lack of economic knowledge on display last night. They basically are trying to force the standard of living up with wealth redistribution. They don’t however take into account where this extra money is going to come from. Its not like the government makes any money on its own so its coming from your own pockets. Or from another loan to China.
It seems the argument is that lots of things cause inflation, so who cares if we raise the minimum wage? The point is that if raising the minimum wage increases inflation then the newly found buying power is eroded and if the solution is to have regular hikes in the minimum wage then basically we are feeding an inflation fire.
Here we are in the United States pretending to know what we are doing meanwhile nations like Norway, Sweden, Germany, Finland, Austria, Switzerland, etc. don’t even have a national minimum wage.
Furthermore I encourage you to look at the correlation between the unemployment rates of states and states with the highest minimum wages. Most of the states with the highest unemployment rates have minimum wages well beyond the current nationally mandated wage of $7.25.
Until the millennium arrives and countries cease trying to enslave others, it will be necessary to accept one’s responsibilities and be willing to make sacrifices for one’s country – as my comrades did. As the troops used to say, “If the country is good enough to live in, it’s good enough to fight for.” With privilege goes responsibility.
Eugene B. Sledge, With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa
scitis fratres mei dilecti sit autem omnis homo velox ad audiendum tardus autem ad loquendum et tardus ad iram
James 1:19
It was mediocre. If you wish to not read a negative review I suggest you read no further. I will only speak on the adaption to film briefly as I wish to judge the movie of itself. I thought Peter Jackson did a fairly decent job of portraying the small details from the book. Enough so to give a decent book to movie portrayal anyway. Beorn had far too little screen time. Overall there was way too much Dwarf screen time throughout the film and very little of Bilbo. The silly contrived pseudo-romance between the elf and dwarf was unnecessary and added nothing but more “drama” to the film. Certain deviations from the story were pointless such as the splitting of the company at Lake-town and the near death of Kili. The dragon was pretty well done and didn’t come off as too unrealistic. The scenes where the dwarfs are running/fighting Smaug are acceptable changes as simply doing as the book foretold wouldn’t be as exciting for the audience. The overall feeling is that nothing was accomplished though in the end. They reach the mountain and awaken the dragon with little happenings along the way. All the major events were saved for the 3rd film. The closing song was not very pleasing to the ears. Although quite slow at the start and also not accomplishing much, An Unexpected Journey was far better. The music of course was excellent.
The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot for ever fence it out.
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
When Hitler declared war on the United States, he was betting that German soldiers, raised up in the Hitler Youth, would always out fight American soldiers, brought up in the Boy Scouts. He lost that bet. The Boy Scouts had been taught how to figure their way out of their own problems.
Stephen E. Ambrose
Acerbity [əˈsɜːbɪtɪ] 