Arsenal

Just when things seem bleak for Arsenal they do some amazing things. First they beat Man U last Saturday. Then on Tuesday they turn loose their youngsters in the Carling Cup. They easily won with a 16 year old mid-fielder leading the way. Wenger is already talking about playing this kid, Jack Wilshire, next to Fabregas in the middle. If he played as well as he did this week that would be quite a tandem. Anyway, see The Daily Telegraph for more.

Veterans Day

Posting

I have been really busy trying to get my new site off of the ground BNET:Government as well as keeping DefenseProcurementNews.com going so that has reduced posting here.

I will try to do some tonight.

Local Election Roundup

In the local area two little comments about the election. First, the Huntsville Times had an article headlined "When Will Alabama Elect a Black President?"; really it should say "Democratic President". Obviously Alabama will vote for a Republican over a Democrat right now, so if the Republicans had run a Black man or woman probably Alabama would have voted for him. Maybe I am being to generous to my fellow citizens but I think that would have happened - maybe not 62-38, but they still would have one.

Our local Congressman retired. He was a Democrat and there was a particularly nasty race to replace him. The Democratic candidate won 52-48. Today analysis shows that about 3% of people either wrote in somebody or refused to vote in that election. Maybe if the election had been a little more strait forward and issue oriented the result might have been different.

My Mazdas

I own and drive two different Mazda vehicles - a 2002 Protege5 and a 2009.5 Mazdaspeed3. The 3 replaced the Protege in Mazda's lineup and the Speed3 is really teh successor of the Protege5; although you can get Mazda3 wagons as well. The Protege5 was known as a driver's car with more than adequate power and good handling. The Mazdaspeed3 is it's big, somewhat brutish brother. The Mazdaspeed3 has twice the horsepower of the Protege5 - 263 versus 130 or so and is actually a smaller car.

The Progege5 has enough power and handling to meet most situations, the Speed3 has more than ample. The simple solution with that car is to put the foot down and just take off. The two cars are very solid and play tricks with your mind on how fast they are going. It is easy in the Speed3 to drive along and look down at the speedo and see that you are going 80+ mph it is so solid. So here is a toast to my two cars, and a nice photo as well.

The Corrs

The Corrs are a family band from Northern Ireland that in the Nineties were huge in that part of the world. They were the most popular band for several years. The band was made up of four siblings, three sisters and a brother, who had basically planned for this all their lives. Their parents were both professional musicians and the children deliberately learned certain instruments so that they could have a band. It helps, of course, to be very talented, and the sisters are drop dead gorgeous as well.

See this early video, "This Is The Right Time" for a good example:

Elections Have Consequences

If you don't think these are not related to the US election then you are a fool:

Hamas fires over 35 rockets toward Israel and Israel: We are committed to cease-fire; but will fire back.

People in Cali are Looking for an AR-15

The Federal Government got rid of their "assault weapon" ban. California has their own. The law bans all AR-15 made by the original manufacturer, but copies from other companies are allowed as long as they don't have 30 round clips, pistol grips or flash suppressors (as well as a host of other cosmetic things - like a bayonet). A few months ago I linked to a site where they had made a CA legal AR-15, and just to make a point made it a Hello Kitty version. I constantly get hits from people in CA looking for a "legal AR-15" going to my post and then on to the Hello Kitty site. So here it is bumped up as it is so popular.

Riflegear.com shows us a perfectly legal AR-15 in California. It is also darn cute, but I wouldn't carry it around manly men. See this post. Also, if you don't get the joke, I am sorry.

First Great Quote of the Election

From an article on the first exit polling at Gawker.com. "
5:33 PM

Ok, you need to stop with these posts. I AM VERY SENSITIVE TODAY, OK?!"

Good luck to all of the candidates.

New Blog - BNET Government

As an extension of my work at DefenseProcurementNews.com I have begun writing a blog on government contracting for BNET. That new site can be found here.

Wonders Never Cease, Washington Post Admits Liberal Bias Bad for Business

Over the last year of the election the Washington Post's Ombudsman, Ms. Howell, has been writing article after article defending the Post's coverage of Obama and McCain. She has offered editor's platitudes as to why Obama got twice as many articles as McCain, or many times more photos then the Republican. Obama is new, different, and McCain is old and been covered over and over.

Now the Post announced that revenue fell 86% in the 3rd Quarter compared to last year. Ms. Howell says that maybe this is due to bias, arrogance and the fact that they have been getting rid of their best people to save money. (That worked so well for Circuit City). In fact, she admits this is not really what their readers want.

She does not make the connection between the bias and arrogance part, but at least this article is a step in the right direction. Perhaps somebody in management will listen to her, but I doubt it. When she did the columns about articles and photos she couldn't find a reporter or editor who understood why that might demonstrate bias, or be wrong.

Well good luck Washington Post. The New York Times is doing the same thing and is collapsing even faster, but good riddance to that.

Who Edits Wikipedia?

Wikiscanner is a site that allows you to find out who has been editing Wikipedia. For kicks I looked at what people coming from The Washington Post ip addresses are editing. The results page is here. It is kind of interesting. Either people who work for the Post are tasked with going into Wikipedia and fixing spelling errors and so on, or a lot of their employees are doing it just for fun. Of course they could be doing it after work hours, or at home using Post laptops I guess.

It might be they research articles here and while they are there they fix things, such as the spelling of "minuscule" in an article on Anilox.

2010 Mazdaspeed3

I have a 2009.5 Mazdaspeed3. This site was able to get some photos of the 2010 model undergoing testing in Germany. It looks very different as they have smoothed out the nose, this requires a hood scoop to route the air to the intercooler. I love my car, but I think this one looks better with the scoop. Most amazing is that they say that Mazda is trying to get the weight down 25%. The car already weighs very little considering.

See more at Mazda3revolution.com.

Intellectual Argument

Steve Sailer has at his blog a complete takedown of Paul Krugman's column on why bubbles should not necessarily be followed by downturns. See the post here. One of the comments is classic, though, in discussing the different schools of thought on economics:

"In this particular case, I find it extra amusing that he is attacking Austrians for lacking stringency. Well, they do lack it, but this coming from an ultra-Keynesian?!? They don’t have any coherent model of the business cycle either. The only guys that have coherent models are the neoclassical, and their models are obviously wrong (newkensians have models too, but they are not very good, they get their results by cheating, such as assuming all firms are monopolies, rather than tying actual patterns we observe to their results)."

I love it when you have arguments like that. As someone who has studied history and historiography; schools of thought arguments are very much part and parcel.

Arsenal Choke

Arsenal had a perfect opportunity to move up to at least a tie with Chelsea for second in the Premiership with a 4-2 lead over Tottenham tonight. Unfortunatley they let them back in to draw 4-4. Arsenal now sits at third after Chelsea beat Hull as well. Arsenal needs to beat Stoke next week and then play well against Man U after that. Unfortunately the young team doesn't seem to have a killer instinct this year in the Premiership. They dominate their Champions League opponents, but don't do the same in the UK. Admittedly it had to be one of Aluminia's worst games. We will see.