Daycare News

Yesterday's notes:

Baby girl:

A happy camper : ) My friends talked to me - and sang to me, I was the bright light. Ms. A gave me lots of love. Dad & Mom, I was turning over and over today and playing with my feet : ).

The boy:

"He did good job today."

Los Tios Will Be Busy This Weekend

Our favorite local restaurant, Los Tios, received a fantastic review from the Washington Post. It is one of the most positive restaurant critiques I've read.

Mission Accomplished!

... for now.

Dubya's, Kennedy's, McCain's, Specter's, and Reid's immigration reform bill was stopped dead in its tracks. Let's take a moment to relish the victory. But us real conservatives don't have the hubris and arrogance of George "Mission Accomplished" "See you at the bill signing" "I've looked into Putin's eyes" Bush. We know they'll try to bring this back, probably sooner than later. (Rob Bluey of Heritage has more on this point.)

And before then, we know the Democrats want to shut down, or at a minimum, intimidate talk radio in the run up to the election. The Dems are liberal when it comes to taxing and spending (and morality) but illiberal when it comes to political speech and thought. I really am surprised they want to pursue this course. If they thought Americans were riled up over immigration reform, they haven't seen anything yet. But, some lefty blogger reports that Pelosi "is solidly behind bringing back the Fairness Doctrine."

The Fairness Doctrine is anything but fair. This will be used, not to provide "balance", but to shut down the stations that broadcast political ideas the establishment doesn't want broadcast. It will cost stations millions of dollars to fight off and defend against the challenges that will be filed under the Doctrine.

The so-called Doctrine was disposed of in the 80's because it was so unclear and hard to enforce. It is even more unworkable these days. Senator Durbin says he supports it because Americans should hear "both sides" of an issue. what about the people who think there are really more than just two sides of an issue? It certainly would be unfair to exclude their point of view under a "Fairness Doctrine." So a station that broadcasts Rush Limbaugh will have to devote some air time to an Al Franken, and it wouldn't be fair to dissallow the likes of Louis Farrakahn or David Duke to voice their views as well.

And what about Christian stations? Are they going to have to provide air time for commentaries from Planned Parenthood or CAIR, or some gay group? What about entertainment shows on the networks that have a lefty bias?

AirAmerica tried to establish a lefty foothold on the AM dial but failed. What the liberals couldn't achieve in the marketplace, they now want to ram down peoples' throats through the regulatory power of the federal government. In the grand scheme, talk radio occupies a relatively small portion of the media and information landscape. AM talk radio is a small but powerful alternative to the left's dominance of newspapers, network news, NPR, Hollywood, and academia.

If they try to enforce this Doctrine, they will be stepping into a huge hornets' nest of outrage and protest. If they do impose it, they'll take aim against the Internet as the next threat to their established power. Lefty bloggers, as ye sow...

In Other Daycare News...

Baby girl's daycare sent home this note today:

"I was so very happy. Gnawing on my fingers; my friends talked to me; tummy time with toys; Ms. S. tried to sing again! Oh Boy!
Storytime, watching my friends dancing to music, and excercise. I had a fun-filled day. Hey mom and dad, I love these people :) ! Have a nice evening!"

Follow Up on the Lying, Weasel, Rat-Bastards Who Own Tiny Tots Playroom in Old Town Alexandria

My lovely wife forwarded one of several messages on DC Metro-area moms' elists claiming that the lying, weasel, rat-bastards who own the Tiny Tots Playroom in Old Town Alexandria send some of their workers home -- without pay -- on the days when they have low attendance. And it isn't as though parents don't pay on the days they don't use daycare!

Even More Crap from China

From an Associated Press report:

Imports of five species of farmed Chinese seafood will be detained until they can be shown free of potentially dangerous antibiotics, federal health officials said Thursday.

The Food and Drug Administration said it would detain the catfish, basa, shrimp, dace and eel after repeated testing has turned up contamination with drugs unapproved in the United States for use in farmed seafood.

China: Our Exports Are Quality Guaranteed!

"It can be said that the quality of China's exports all are guaranteed," Wang Xinpei, a spokesman for the Chinese Commerce Ministry.

Maybe that was a Clintonian statement since Wang didn't specify whether he meant to guarantee good quality, or poor quality.

This article is full of amazingly disgusting details:

The statement was among Beijing's most public assertions of the safety of its exports since they came under scrutiny earlier this year with the deaths of dog and cats in North America blamed on Chinese wheat gluten tainted with the chemical melamine.

Since then, U.S. authorities have turned away or recalled toxic fish, juice containing unsafe color additives and popular toy trains decorated with lead paint.

Chinese-made toothpaste also has been banned by numerous countries in North and South America and Asia for containing diethylene glycol, or DEG, a chemical often found in antifreeze. It is also a low-cost — and sometimes deadly — substitute for glycerin, a sweetener in many drugs.

On Wednesday, three Japanese importers recalled millions of Chinese-made travel toothpaste sets, many sold to inns and hotels, after they were found to contain as much as 6.2 percent of diethylene glycol.

Wang, the Commerce Ministry spokesman, said Chinese experts have already "explained the situation."

He gave no details, although the country's quality watchdog has in past cited tests from 2000 that it said showed toothpaste containing less than 15.6 percent diethylene glycol was harmless to humans.

The New York Times reported early Thursday that about 900,000 tubes of tainted Chinese toothpaste have been distributed in the United States, showing up in correctional facilities and some hospitals.

Officials in Georgia and North Carolina told The Times there had been no illnesses reported, and that the toothpaste in question was being replaced with brands not manufactured in China.

Earlier this month, a spokesman for North Carolina's Department of Correction said Pacific brand toothpaste was distributed to prisoners who could not afford to buy a name brand at prison stores. The tubes were taken away after trace amounts of DEG was found in them.

Also Thursday, state media said Beijing police raided a village where live pigs were force-fed wastewater to boost their weight before slaughter, underscoring the country's chronic food safety problems.

Plastic pipes had been forced down the pigs' throats and villagers had pumped each 220-pound pig with 44 pounds of wastewater, the Beijing Morning Post reported.

Paperwork showed the pigs were headed for one of Beijing's main slaughterhouses and stamps on their ears indicated that they already had been through quarantine and inspection, the paper said. Suspects escaped during Wednesday's raid and no arrests were made, it said.

The case underscored China's chaotic food safety situation, where manufacturers and distributors often use unapproved additives, falsify expiration dates or find other methods of cutting corners to eke out small profits.

Earlier this week, inspectors announced they had closed 180 food factories nationwide in the first half of this year and seized tons of candy, pickles, crackers and seafood tainted with formaldehyde, illegal dyes and industrial wax.

"These are not isolated cases," Han Yi, an official with the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, was quoted as saying in Wednesday's state-run China Daily newspaper.

Han's admission was significant because the agency has said in the past that safety violations were the work of a few rogue operators — a claim aimed at protecting China's billions of dollars of food exports.

I'm a Cool Dude Dad!

We recently had a big day-care disaster thanks to the lying, weasel, rat-bastards who own the Tiny Tots Playroom in Old Town Alexandria. I would counsel against sending your children there; if you have to, get information from them in writing so you can nail their asses to the wall if you need to. They were over-capacity and shut down without any notice, failed to communicate clearly with parents about the situation, and flat out lied to me.

Anyway, after an extremely stressful 48-hour period we made alternative arrangements with an in-home provider for our now 7 month old girl. At first, I thought the new place was merely adequate, but their stock rose with me over the first few days we were there. Baby girl is very happy.

And they send entertaining notes and cards. Here is the Fathers' Day card they made for me:

My Dad is a Cool Dude...
When my dad comes
home from work at
night, He says, "Hey man,
give me five," and I
lay it on him. My dad is
a Cool Dude!
So there it is, fully-documented proof.

The Wild Wild East

A Western reporter tried to visit the Chinese factory that made the Thomas the Train toys with the lead paint, he was detained for hours and hours as an industrial spy. Thanks to corruption and a weak regulatory regime, factories in China have felt free to cut corners and produce substandard, shoddy, and sometimes dangerous goods. The ChiCom government should focus less on restricting speech and access to information and more on setting basic life-preserving standards for industry.

Fairness Doctrine?

I just heard a teaser on CNN that strongly implied that Ann Coulter called for terrorists to kill one of the Presidential candidates. Maybe the full story put Coulter's statement in its proper sarcastic context referencing Bill Maher's asinine statement, but even so, that is irresponsible journalism.

Update: Rob Bluey has some more details and background on the Edwards Vs. Coulter controversy. In a nutshell, Edwards' people are attacking Coulter for making personal attacks, while at the same time they are using Coulter in fundraising pushes to raise a boatload of cash.

Widespread Problems in China's Food Factories

China is in the midst of a serious crackdown after all the international outrage over tainted and deadly Chinese exports. 180 food factories were shut down for using illegal chemicals.

More Chinese Crap

Lead paint used on toys, tainted pet food, poisoned toothpaste, and now China has sent us faulty tires.

A New Jersey importer has asked the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for help in recalling about 450,000 light-truck tires made in China after a fatal rollover crash. ...
Foreign Tire Sales told U.S. safety officials tires sold under the names Westlake, Telluride, Compass and YKS could fail at highway speeds. It also told federal officials at least six other U.S. distributors had sold tires of similar construction by the same manufacturer.

The Chinese are giving free trade a bad name.

The Enemy We Face

The AP reports on a 6-year old who says the Taliban tried to trick him into carrying out a suicide mission.

Mapping the Net

Some mathematicians devised a model to map out the internet. Here is what it looks like:


They mapped it by "nodes": internet service providers and large organizations with a lot of web traffic. Then they were grouped according to the number of links they had with other nodes.

The researchers discovered that the Internet consists of a dense, heavily connected nucleus of about 100 nodes, including Google and U.S. telecommunications giant ATT WorldNet. Surrounding this core was a region they called the 'peer-connected' component, which is able to connect to the bulk of the Internet without causing congestion in the nucleus. It is possible for data to get between any two points in the peer-connected component within about four links. The final, outermost layer is more sparsely connected, and must travel through the nucleus to reach other nodes.

The Office: The Video Game?

This is odd.

In a somewhat strange deal with network television's NBC Universal, MumboJumbo games has licensed the rights to "The Office" which will be recreated as a casual video game. The plan is to turn The Office into a inexpensive game where players must finish odd jobs around the office as well as join in office pranks.

Link to the full article.

Caption This Conure

The Real Ending of the Sopranos

Someone posted the un-aired real ending of the Sopranos:



It is still better than what David Chase came up with.

Congressional Limbo

The latest Gallup survey finds that 71 percent of respondents express disapproval of Congress. the congressional job approval rating stands at 24 percent.

It is unusual for congressional job approval ratings to be at or below 24%. Congress has been rated this negatively only a few times in the four decades Gallup has measured this item -- in 1979, during the energy crisis; at several points during the "term limits era" of 1990 to 1994; and last year.

That low, and they have only just begun their orgy of spending and taxing.

Slick Hillary Whacks David Chase

David Chase had 8-10 years to come up with a conclusion to his hit series, The Sopranos. After all that time, his big idea was to cop out on a conclusion with a concussive cut to black.

What a horrible way to go out and I think his choice was disrespectful of his viewers. That's not good story telling.

Some people think that with the recent flashbacks of Bacala's (sp?) discussion of being shot, that Tony was whacked. But David Chase gave the viewer absolutely no grounds for knowing what happened to the characters at the moment the screen went dark.

My interpretation is that Chase was having a little joke with the viewers. It wasn't Tony who was whacked at that moment. It was the audience.

And, ultimately, my guess, is DVD sales. It will be a long time before I would even want to watch any of the shows again, knowing that it ends on such an existentially disappointing and unsatisfying beat.

And, then along comes Hillary's parody:




I enjoyed Mr. Clinton's line about the onion rings. It would have been even better if he payed homage to AJ's famous quote from the first episode: "What?! No #$%^in' ziti?!" But, you know, in a family-friendly way.

Mrs. Clinton is still cold, clammy, and creepy. Johnny Sac's menacing glare must represent the scorn and distrust that male voters have for Hillary. But kudos to her and her team for creating an entertaining video that puts David Chase to shame.

So That's What Happened to Andy

All season I've wondered why the Yankees went with Josh Phelps over Andy Phillips at first base. I never noticed a big difference defensively, and Andy has more pop out of his bat. Turned out he had a family emergency that kept him occupied for a while. He was recalled today and Phelps was released.

A List Worth Recommending

Sometimes lists about the internet seem cobbled together for the sake of generating an article. This PC World list of "25 Web Sites to Watch" is an actually interesting compilation of websites worth bookmarking.

The 10 Second Rule

Copyblogger.com posts lots of great blog-writing tips, including this article, The 10 Second Rule:
How to Write for Diagonal Readers.

61+?

The Daily News figures that Alex Rodriguez is on pace to break Roger Maris's American League homerun record.

He hasn't been my favorite Yankee because he often acts or speaks without thinking first, and, of course, because he goes cold in October. But if A-Rod could eclipse Barry Bonds' records, I would be eternally grateful!

Thomas the Tank Engine Recalled!

The Chinese have done it again. More dangerous products Made in China have been imported.

RC2 Corp. in cooperation with the Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a recall for several toys in the Thomas the Tank Engine set that may include lead paint.

The affected 1.5 million toys recalled include:
Red James Engine & Red James� # 5 Coal Tender
Red Lights & Sounds James Engine & Red James� #5 Lights & Sounds Coal Tender
James with Team Colors Engine & James with Team Colors #5 Coal Tender
Red Skarloey Engine
Brown & Yellow Old Slow Coach
Red Hook & Ladder Truck & Red Water Tanker Truck
Red Musical Caboose
Red Sodor Line Caboose
Red Coal Car labeled �2006 Day Out With Thomas� on the Side
Red Baggage Car
Red Holiday Caboose
Red Sodor Mail Car
Red Fire Brigade Truck
Red Fire Brigade Train
Deluxe Sodor Fire Station
Red Coal Car
Yellow Box Car
Red Stop Sign
Yellow Railroad Crossing Sign
Yellow Sodor Cargo Company Cargo Piece
Smelting Yard
Ice Cream Factory.

The toys were sold during 2005. RC2 recall web page, http://rc2corp.com/company/recalls.asp, isn't working at the moment, probably crushed under the traffic load. They can also be reached at (866) 725-4407.

The press release says that packages coded "WJ" or "AZ" are not included in the recall, but who saves the packages over 2 years? Are there Thomas geeks like the Comic Book Guy who preserve Percy, Mavis, Toby, et al. pristinely in their original packaging?

Here is a picture of the leaden toys:

SciFi News

While doing some research on QubeTV, the conservative alternative to YouTube, I found this "news" site that takes articles from Yahoo's world news page and auto-replaces certain words with sci-fi phrases. The challenge is to figure out what the original news stories were.

Mars Rover

The little Mars Rover has been getting around. Here is a nifty map of its progress across the Martian surface.

Al Gore Wants to Kill People on Life Support!!

As part of this summer's hypocritical concert, Live Earth, Al Gore had wanted all viewers to switch off their lights at the same time. Great Britain's National Grid pulled the plug on the idea:

[T]he power surge when people switched their lights back on could cause disruptions in supply and even endanger hospital patients on life support machines.

If the artist are truly concerned about energy use, shouldn't they be playing on acoustic instruments? They probably shouldn't broadcast the event either, that only encourages people to burn electricity when they turn on their televisions, radios, and internets.

Smile, You Might Be on GoogleCam

Google added a new feature to its maps enabling users to see street-view pictures in certain cities. They drove around the selected cities in a van with multiangled cameras on the roof filming everything as they went. GoogleBlogoscoped has a gallery of some of the scenes people have found in the new service.

CNET has more photos here.