Sesame Street Ruined My Life

My mother said that some of my early educational experiences were from Sesame Street. I don’t remember much except that I liked Ernie and the Cookie Monster. Did you ever try to laugh like Ernie or eat cookies like Cookie Monster? When I woke up politically I did wonder how much of the Socialist Kool Aid I may have ingested. I don’t remember that show being so bad that it wouldn’t be appropriate for my kids or my far-in-the-future grandkids to see. It was a mix of entertainment and education. Harmless, unless you’re today’s hypersensitive liberal.

I saw this on Slashdot Sunday. Sesame Street: Old School volumes 1 and 2 are now available on DVD. The disks come with a warning (?): “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.” Adults only?? This is SOOOOO stupid.

Comcast and The Flow of The Internet

Here’s some more news on the Comcast traffic blocking story (I wrote about it near the end of this post). On 10/22, the New York Times had an article regarding Comcast’s blocking of peer-to-peer traffic. According to the article, Comcast “occasionally – but not always – delays some peer-to-peer file transfers that eat into Internet speeds for other users on the network.” If there is some truth to this, I can understand the desire to manage network traffic to benefit all subscribers, but I seriously doubt that a few peer-to-peer software users are using so much bandwidth that it’s going to mess up service to other Comcast users. Now there’s a complaint filed at the FCC against Comcast. SaveTheInternet.com has filed this complaint, which is discussed in the press release here. I guess this isn’t going to end real soon is it?

Random Thoughts: Regressives, RINOs and File Sharing

Listening to Rush Limbaugh on Friday, I heard him refer to so-called “progressives” as “regressives”, a term that I’ve thought for a while should be used. The line in Kerry Livgren’s song “Progress” is so appropriate for them: Progress, we are marching backward… (I have all the lyrics on this post). According to NinjaWords, “regressive” means “returning to a former less advanced state”. We have dipped our toes in the cesspool of socialism and smelled the fowl stench of its waters. We cannot wade further into that.

Over in the People’s Democratic Republic of The State of Maryland, some of the residents of US House District 1 have decided they are tired of Wayne Gilcrest’s left-ward ways. They are working to toss him out of the House in the next Republican primary. Good for them! Hopefully they will put up a real Republican and get the RINO out of there. It looks like Andy Harris is their man. Could they clone him and send the clone to Delaware? I’d like to see our RINO gone too.

It appears that Comcast is interfering with some Internet traffic in an attempt to stop file sharing. While most would agree that the majority of file sharing occurring online is of the illegal type, this filtering is going to put a halt to legitimate file-sharing, such as certain movies and music, even software like Knoppix. I’ve recently gotten live music from two artists that allow their music to be shared. This is being distributed by BitTorrent, but this legal activity will be stopped as well. Even BitTorrent, Inc. is selling content now, but this will also be blocked. I’m annoyed and frustrated by that, but it’s within their rights to control the traffic that’s coming across their lines. If you want to take a “free speech” angle here, remember that Comcast is not a government agency nor are the lines delivering that service to your home part of public property. When they say that this filtering is a bandwidth issue, that file sharing software is effecting their other customers, I think they’ve got more available bandwidth than they are letting on. I wholeheartedly disagree with their filtering as it’s punishing the good with the bad, but I guess there’s no way around it. When I was in elementary school, frequently our class would be punished as a whole because of the actions of a few. In the situation with Comcast, I guess the few are being punished for the actions of the many. Either way, it’s sad.

I’m Not The King

I’ve read both of these:

“Honey, I - I - I’M not the King…CHRIST is King! I’m Elvis!”

“I’m not the King, Jesus Christ is King. I’m just a singer.”

- Elvis Presley, 1935 - 1977.

Amazing Grace Movie

I’m interested in seeing this film about the ending of the slave trade in England, but I’ll probably have to wait until it comes out on DVD. Looks like a great film.

http://hotair.com/archives/2007/03/29/amazing-grace

Monday’s Random Thoughts: It’s Cold, SuperBowl, and Reagan

It’s 17 degrees going down to 8, maybe as low as 2. I’m freezing. If I see another propagana piece on global warming, I’m going to puke. I probably should say more, but I don’t know where to begin. Maybe here: The Real Inconvenient Truth.

I thought Prince did a good job on half time at the SuperBowl. Still not U2, but much better than recent years (sorry Sir Paul).

Favorite SuperBowl commerical: Blockbuster Video. Second favorite: Doritos - Live The Flavor.

Today Tuesday would have been Ronald Reagan’s 96th birthday. Good site remembering his legacy and looking to the future: http://reagan2020.us.

**Update/correction: I goofed. Reagan’s b-day was 2/6 (Tuesday), not 2/5 (Monday). My bad.

New WBOC News Anchor

I just watched the 11pm news on WBOC and saw their new anchor. Seemed to do a good job. WBOC’s got his bio up on the site. The guy’s got a nice resume. Curiousity had me, so I Googled him and found a blog and a MySpace page. Sorry to see that his viewpoint is liberal. Hopefully his viewpoints won’t color his news reporting like so many of the people he has listed as his heros on the MySpace page.

It does make me wonder how many libs they’ve got there at WBOC. I haven’t noticed a regular liberal slant. At times it seems that their national news reporting is just the same old crap that CBS spews out. It would be nice sometimes to just watch the news and not feel like you’re being maniplulated by someone. I guess that’s why I watch Fox.

Superbowl Halftime Show

I’ve got to throw in my two cents on the Superbowl Halftime Show. You know, it was nothing but a freak show. I’m not known for watching football, not until my oldest son wanted to watch, but of the halftimes I’ve seen, the ONLY good one was U2 in 2002 when they did the 9/11 tribute.

U2 opened with “Beautiful Day”, which was performed with such energy, well, I could only get caught up into it. Then, they moved on to “MLK”, performed while the names of the 9/11 victims scrolled behind them. They then moved into “Where The Streets Have No Name”, which while being an old song (1987), it was fitting for the occasion, considering it was talking about Heaven. That was a memorable show, a good memory.

Now, this years’ poor excuse for a music whatever, well, that may say it all. It was a freak show. No real music. No real entertainment. Nothing meaningful. Nothing. I hope the NFL has learned their lesson and stops booking pseudo-musicians.