Saturday, May 26, 2007

Perspective on our "Media"...

My grandfather sent me this email it I think it demonstrates and important message that needs to be conveyed.


Eye of the Beholder by Victor Davis Hanson The American Enterprise Online




War torn Iraq has about 26 million residents, a peaceful California perhaps now 35 million. The former is a violent and impoverished landscape, the latter said to be paradise on Earth. But how you envision either place to some degree depends on the eye of the beholder and is predicated on what the daily media appear to make of each.



As a fifth generation Californian, I deeply love this state, but still imagine what the reaction would be if the world awoke each morning to be told that once again there were six more murders, 27 rapes, 38 arsons, 180 robberies, and 360 instances of assault in California yesterday, today, tomorrow, and every day. I wonder if the headlines would scream about "Nearly 200 poor Californians butchered again this month!"



How about a monthly media dose of "600 women raped in February alone!" Or try, "Over 600 violent robberies and assaults in March, with no end in sight!" Those do not even make up all of the state's yearly 200,000 violent acts that law enforcement knows about.



Iraq's judicial system seems a mess. On the eve of the war, Saddam let out 100,000 inmates from his vast prison archipelago. He himself sat in the dock months after his t rial began. But imagine an Iraq with a penal system like California's with 170,000 criminals - an inmate population larger than those of Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Singapore combined. Just to house such a shadow population costs our state nearly $7 billion a year or about the same price of keeping 40,000 Army personnel per year in Iraq. What would be the image of our Golden State if we were reminded each morning, "Another $20 million spent today on housing our criminals"?





Some of California's most recent prison scandals would be easy to sensationalize: "Guards watch as inmates are raped!" Or "Correction officer accused of having sex with under-aged detainee!" And apropos of Saddam's sluggish trial, remember that our home state multiple murderer, Tookie Williams, was finally executed in December 2005 - TWENTY SIX years after he was originally sentenced.



Much is made of the inability to patrol Iraq's borders with Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Turkey. But California has on ly a single border with a foreign nation, not six Yet over 3 million foreigners who sneaked in illegally now live in our state. Worse, there are about 15,000 convicted alien felons incarcerated in our penal system, costing about $500 million a year. Imagine the potential tabloid headlines: "Illegal aliens in state comprise population larger than San Francisco!" or "Drugs, criminals, and smugglers given free pass into California!"



Every year, over 4,000 Californians die in car crashes - more than the number of Americans lost so far in the years of combat operations in Iraq. In some sense, then, our badly maintained roads, and often poorly trained and sometimes intoxicated drivers, are even more lethal than IED's (Improvised Explosive Devices.) Perhaps tomorrow's headline might scream out at us: "300 Californians to perish this month on state highways! Hundreds more will be maimed and crippled!"



In 2001, California had 32 days of power outages, despite paying nearly the highest rates for electricity in the United States. Before complaining about the smoke in Baghdad rising from private generators, think back to the run on generators in California when they were contemplated as a future part of every household's line of defense.



We're told that Iraq's finances are a mess. Yet until recently, so were California's. Two years ago, Governor Schwarzenegger inherited a $38 billion annual budget shortfall. That could have made for strong morning newscast teasers: "Another $100 million borrowed today - $3 billion more in red ink to pile up by month's end!"



So is California comparable to Iraq? Hardly. Yet it could easily be sketched by a reporter intent on doing so as a bankrupt, crime-ridden area with murderous highways, tens of thousands of inmates, with wide-open borders.



I myself recently returned home to California, without incident, from a visit to Iraq's notorious Sunni Triangle. While I was gone, a drug-addicted criminal with a long list of convictions broke into our kitchen at 4 a.m. was surprised by my wife and daughter, and fled with our credit cards, cash, keys, and cell phones. Sometimes I wonder who really was safer that week.


Disneyland - Part 1

Since I don't have my friends pictures yet I have decided to post the 1 picture of what I did during my time at Disneyland w/ my friends. Ya I know you'll probably mock me cause I'm a "nerd" but ohh well, computer games must have trained me well



Here is a link to the full picture
Click


KROQ'S 106.7 Biggest Bands of All Time

Well today at 3:40 I found out who KROQ's Biggest Band of All Time was, Red Hot Chili Peppers. Supposedly on monday they are going to have a list of all the bands but I was happy I actually liked the number 1 band because sometimes I end up hating what they say is the best. Ya Math 2 subject test is really boring to study.


Thursday, May 24, 2007

Sendspace

While I was looking for a good uploading site I came across sendspace. It has 300mb's of uploading space per upload and I just uploaded a 200mb file in less than an hour. If you want to sign up just click here.
Sign up here


Sunday, May 20, 2007

Finals

Since finals are coming up I decided to make this for you people who like to see what they need on their final for a certain grade.



Cool Online Calculator

http://instacalc.com/

Enough said


Maybe Gas Prices Aren't So Bad

So I was thinking about the price we pay for stuff these days, and it dawned on me. We are willing to pay a lot of money for luxury items but refuse to accept that staple items are subject to inflation just like everything else. Take a look at this graph of the relative price of certain goods:



How many people do you know who must have their Starbucks coffee every morning? Or who guzzle down can after can of Pepsi. Ever take a trip to Cedar Point, a Major League Baseball Game or the zoo? If you have, you better enjoy that bottled water, because you are paying over $15 per gallon of it. When you think about it, you'd be hard-pressed to find any liquid product that you can buy for less than $3.20 per gallon.

We don't mind paying so much for luxury goods because we get some sort of immediate gratification from them. Pepsi goes great with pizza and chicken wings; bottled water at the ball game quenches your thirst; and a Starbucks Java Chip Frappuccino is the most delicious way to wake up in the morning. We want our cars to go but don't want to pay to make them go. In retrospect, it could be a lot worse. Imagine what the world would be like if cars ran on Starbucks lattes instead of gasoline...

Taken from http://robpitingolo.blogspot.com/


Starcraft II!

Surprisingly Blizzard decided to release information about their upcoming new game. Starcraft II!
I am very excited for this and hope it will live up to the hype.


http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/starcraft2/index.html