Author: matthew

Yes, you know you want to pop the bubble wrap now.

Today, for the first time, much like when I discovered how to tie my shoes, I had an epiphany:

I finally learned how to fold my shirts. You, too, can have l33t f0ld1ng sk1llz. Rock on!

Note to spouse: This doesn’t mean that I’ll be folding all my own shirts now. It just means I can no longer claim “it takes too long” or “I don’t know how” as a defense 🙂

Today I simply wanted to send out a “thank you” to some of the vets I know. Today is Veterans Day, which, unlike Memorial Day, honors the living rather than the dead.

• William Gallagher Barnson, retired Air Force Colonel. My adopted father served honorably in the active duty and reserve stateside throughout the Cold War, and had served in the navy during the Korean War.
• Jeffrey Kevin Barnson, my adopted brother, veteran of the First Gulf War flying a C-130 Hercules for the Air Force.
• Brian Michael Barnson, my older brother who honorably served in the U.S. navy.
• Ryan Rawlins, good friend and former Utah National Guardsman. Called him this morning to thank him.
• Richard Wendell Ellis, my father-in-law, who served in the U.S. army stateside and in Germany, retiring a few years ago to Idaho.
• Our very own Jon Brusco, friend for the last nineteen years, who served us in the U.S. army stateside and Panama, acquiring wounds that will never fully heal. Kind of like Frodo, if Frodo had a bum knee.
• Kevin Graham, currently serving in parts unknown. I haven’t seen him for thirteen years, but I’ve heard about him here and there, one day serving here, and another day serving there.

According to Woodrow Wilson’s Armistice Day proclamation, “the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nation.”

Who would you like to give props to this Veteran’s Day? Now’s the time, because tomorrow it won’t be Veteran’s Day anymore 🙂

Robert Anson Heinlein, deceased science fiction author, popularized an acronym: TANSTAAFL. This means “There Aint No Such Thing As A Free Lunch”.

I’ve watched with interest as various environmental activists over the years have opposed coal, oil, and nuclear power plants. Some advocate hydroelectric power, but we’ve discovered to our chagrin that damming rivers leads to dramatic downstream ecosystem declines. Wind power, on the other hand, has been proposed by many as a viable alternative.

Well, it turns out that Wind Power Ain’t All It’s Cracked Up To Be. WPAAICUTB… nah, it doesn’t quite cut it. Anyway, wind power actually raises local temperatures significantly, and if used in sufficient numbers, could cause global climatologic variances, too. While the impact of wind towers on the environment are roughly 1/5th the equivalent, per megawatt, of coal power, it just goes to show TANSTAAFL.

I dunno, I still think that nuclear power is the solution. We can dump all the waste in a very confined geographic area (like the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Tribe proposes we use some of their mostly-wasteland reservation for), and the global climate cost is negligible. But the old “NIMBY” (Not In My Back Yard) contingent opposes storing waste near them.

Me, I live in Tooele. I’d live literally just a handful of miles from what the Goshutes propose should be the world’s largest radioactive waste dump. Store the dang stuff; it’s better to store it near my family than raising the world’s temperatures and sea levels.

I ran across a study today on people’s answers to the basic question, “What is your religion, if any?”.

Key findings:

• the proportion of the population that can be classified as Christian has declined from eighty-six in 1990 to seventy-seven percent in 2001;
• although the number of adults who classify themselves in non-Christian religious groups has increased from about 5.8 million to about 7.7 million, the proportion of non-Christians has increased only by a very small amount – from 3.3 % to about 3.7 %;
• the greatest increase in absolute as well as in percentage terms has been among those adults who do not subscribe to any religious identification; their number has more than doubled from 14.3 million in 1990 to 29.4 million in 2001; their proportion has grown from just eight percent of the total in 1990 to over fourteen percent in 2001
• there has also been a substantial increase in the number of adults who refused to reply to the question about their religious preference, from about four million or two percent in 1990 to more than eleven million or over five percent in 2001;
• Women are more likely than men to describe their outlook as “religious”;
• Older Americans are more likely than younger to describe their outlook as “religious”;
• Black Americans are least likely to describe themselves as secular, Asian Americans are most likely to do so;
• those who identify with one or another of the main religious groups are considerably more likely to be married than those who have no religion;
• Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and those with no religion continue to have a greater preference for the Democratic party over the Republican – much as they did in 1990. Evangelical or Born Again Christians and Mormons are the most apt to identify as Republicans. Buddhists and those with no religion are most likely to be political independents. In keeping with their theology, Jehovah’s Witnesses disavow political involvement.

What do you think this means, if anything, for America? What do you think are the causes? The effects?