Just a quick note to all of you REALLY stupid ebay bidders who are new to the idea of an auction.

The point of an auction is not to buy an item for retail value, as one can just go to the store and buy something for that price.

The idea behind an auction is to pay as LITTLE as possible while still meeting the value the seller has put on the item.

Case in point, a MacBook Pro retails for around $2400. If someone has one they would like to sell for $1000 LET THEM! Don’t bid aimlessly every 5 seconds until the ebay bid reaches $2500… if you do that, you deserve a swift kick to the head.

It’s that time of year again… and no I’m not talking about EggNog and Christmas Trees… I’m talking about making small children cry!

A 5th Grade class in a UK Primary School was given seasonal worksheets and lesson plans. Included with these lessons was information about how ‘many small children believe in Father Christmas (Santa)’ but went on to explain in great detail to the kids how the many thousands of letters sent to Santa each year are simply answered by the Post Office.

After reading about the Post Office responses, the children were then asked to write a letter to a pretend child, explaining in detail why their wishes for certain gifts did not come true.

The worksheet was produced by the Hamilton Trust, who’s director Ruth Merttens issued a statement defending the material in question.

“I feel sorry for the teacher concerned, but we produce the worksheets and it is up to teachers how they use them in class. I don’t want to upset anybody but I would say by the age of ten it seems unlikely that a child wouldn’t be aware of Santa’s imaginary nature.”

Now I will give it to her that MOST 10 year olds will have discovered that a physical person who resides in the polar regions of our planet is nothing short of a fairy tale butshe is going off of the assumption (assume makes an ASS out of U and ME) that children of that age SHOULD have “figured it out” the physical impossibilities of an overnight trip to every man, woman and child by now… not all have and there is the issue.

Faith is a very powerful thing, especially for small children. There is a great deal of magic involved in the way most people celebrate the Christmas Holiday, and giving them a worksheet that requires a 5th grader to “break the news” to a small child is not only completely insensitive, it is way out of line on the part of the teacher(s) involved. Just because you’re a humbug, and in charge of developing impressionable minds, does not give you the right, nor the privilege to spoil their traditions or expectations.

The spirit of Christmas means something different to each person that celebrates it, and just because some people choose to embody that spirit into the form of a Jolly Elf, doesn’t mean you have to get in the way.

The school has apologized to all the parents of the children involved and acknowledges that while they cannot undo what is done, the lesson in question will not be done again… and that all staff have been instructed to address questions about Santa and pals with a simple, “I’m not quite sure, you may want to ask your mom or dad.”

Common sense would have made such a response ‘policy’ years ago, but common sense seems to be missing from most adults these days.

Sgt. Roy A. Wood
47 years old from Alva, Florida
ODA 2092, Company C, 3rd Battalion, 20th Special Forces Group (Airborne)
January 26, 2005

Sgt. Roy A. Wood, a Special Forces medical sergeant, was fatally injured when the vehicle he was riding in was involved in a traffic accident near Kabul, Afghanistan, during a return convoy from Qalat to Bagram Air Base.

His 24-year military career with the Army Reserve and Army National Guard was distinguished and unique. After receiving a commission as a second lieutenant in 1979, he was first assigned to the Army Reserve’s 421st Quartermaster Company (Light Airdrop Supply).

While assigned to the 421st, he received training as a quartermaster officer, a parachute rigger, and participated in both basic airborne and jumpmaster courses.

In January 1982, he left the 421st to begin an association with U.S. Army Special Forces that would last until, and beyond, his death.

His first SF assignment was to the Army Reserve’s 11th Special Forces Group (Airborne) at Fort Meade, Md., where he served in the 3rd Battalion’s Company A as the detachment executive officer for Operational Detachment-A 1175.

In May 1983, he became Detachment Commander for ODA 1175 after returning from the Special Forces Detachment Officer Qualification Course.

In October 1984, he left ODA 1175 to become the Company Logistics Officer.

He served in a variety of positions at the 11th SFG over the next 11 years, including operations officer and support company commander.

After four years at USSOCOM, he served a year with the Army Reserve’s 73rd Field Hospital in St. Petersburg, Fla., before switching from the Reserve to the Army National Guard and renewing his association with Special Forces.

He was assigned to 3rd Bn., 20th SFG in December 2001, where he served for a year as the Battalion Surgeon, supervising medical coverage of three Special Forces companies and one support company.

In December 2002, he resigned his commission to become a Special Forces medical sergeant on Operational Detachment-A 2092, Co. C, 3rd Bn., 20th SFG.

He, with ODA 2092, was mobilized in July 2003 in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.

At the time of his death, he was pending appointment as a Special Forces warrant officer, a position in which he would have served his team as an assistant detachment commander.

During his service, he received the Army Commendation Medal, the Army Achievement Medal, the Army Reserve Achievement Medal with Silver Hourglass device, the National Defense Service Medal, the Army Service Ribbon, the Basic Parachutist badge, the Parachute Rigger badge, the Ranger tab and the Special Forces tab.

Sgt. Roy Wood leaves behind a wife and two children.

These brave men and women have given their lives so that others may enjoy the freedoms we get to enjoy everyday. For that, I am proud to call them Hero.
We Have Every Right To Dream Heroic Dreams.
Those Who Say That We’re In A Time When There Are No Heroes, They Just Don’t Know Where To Look

This post is part of the Wednesday Hero Blogroll. If you would like to participate in honoring the brave men and women who serve this great country, you can find out how by clicking here.

Viscount Monckton of Brenchley recently issued an open letter in response to written correspondence by US Senators Snowe (R-ME) and Rockefeller (D-WV)to Exxon Mobil requesting that they reverse their stance on the impact of man on the warming of our planet.

The full letter can be seen here but I feel the need to share some segments with you here.

The US Constitution guarantees the right of free speech. It is inappropriate for elected Senators such as yourselves to suggest that any person should refrain from exercising that right, as you have done in your letter of October 27 to the CEO of ExxonMobil. That great corporation has exercised its right of free speech – and with good reason – in openly providing support for scientists and groups that dare to question how much the increased concentration of CO2 in the air may warm the world. You must honour the Constitution, withdraw your letter and apologize to ExxonMobil, or resign as Senators.

You defy every tenet of democracy when you invite ExxonMobil to deny itself the right to provide information to “senior elected and appointed government officials” who disagree with your opinion. You are elected officials yourselves. If you do not believe in the right of persons within the United States to exercise their fundamental right under the world’s greatest Constitution to petition their elected representatives for the redress of their grievances, then you have no place on Capitol Hill.

The UN will also reduce its high-end estimate of sea-level rise to 2100 from 3 feet to just 17 inches. Morner (2004), a lifelong student of sea level changes, says: “There is a total absence of any recent ‘acceleration in sea level rise’ as often claimed by IPCC and related groups. … our best estimate of possible future sea-level changes is +10 +/- 10cm in a century, or, maybe, even +5 +/- 15cm.” That is a maximum of 8 inches in 100 years. See also Morner (1995); INQUA (2000).

There is no evidence that today’s temperatures are warmer than during the mediaeval warm period 1,000 years ago. Yet in 2005, the palaeoclimatologist David Deming wrote that after he had published a paper in Science [Deming, 1995] –

“I gained significant credibility in the community of scientists working on climate change. They thought I was one of them, someone who would pervert science in the service of social and political causes. One of them let his guard down. A major person working in the area of climate change and global warming sent me an astonishing email that said, ‘We have to get rid of the Mediaeval Warm Period.’”

You acknowledge the effectiveness of the climate sceptics. In so doing, you pay a compliment to the courage of those free-thinking scientists who continue to research climate change independently despite the likelihood of refusal of publication in journals that have taken preconceived positions; the hate mail and vilification from ignorant environmentalists; and the threat of loss of tenure
in institutions of learning which no longer make any pretence to uphold or cherish academic freedom.

I challenge you to withdraw or resign because your letter is the latest in what appears to be an internationally-coordinated series of maladroit and malevolent attempts to silence the voices of scientists and others who have sound grounds, rooted firmly in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, to question what you would have us believe is the unanimous agreement of scientists worldwide that global warming will lead to what you excitedly but unjustifiably call “disastrous” and “calamitous” consequences.

The British “Foreign Secretary”, one Beckett, responded to a recent newspaper article by me that questioned the science behind the soi-disant “consensus” on climate change by demanding – during an otherwise paralyzing speech on terrorism – that the news media should treat climate sceptics as though they were spokesmen for Islamic terrorism and should deny them column inches or air time. Al Gore, who was Vice-President when the Senate declared 97-0 that it would not ratify any treaty that did not bind fast-growing, heavily-polluting nations such as China, India, Indonesia and Brazil because without them no action by the West would make any difference, wrote a reply to my article saying that I should not be discussing these matters in the Press. He said I should rely on peer-reviewed research in journals such as Science, Nature and Geophysical Research Letters. Within 12 hours, I had published a 24-page refutation of his scientifically-inaccurate article, citing more than 60 references in learned journals. Twenty-five of the citations were from the three journals he mentioned. You will rightly deduce from Beckett’s sinister remark that after a decade of Socialist government freedom of speech does not figure in our constitution. But let me quote the First Amendment to yours:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or
abridging the freedom of speech or of the Press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the
Government for a redress of grievances.”

Keep in mind that although it is implied in his quoting of our First Amendment these congressmen weren’t attempting to legislate their intentions at the time the letter was issued to ExxonMobil, BUT there has been no effort to mask the intentions of our governments, or the efforts of foreign governments to make skeptics into criminals.

I’ve never ever watched the View but I have seen it go from bad to worse over the course of several years worth of news clippings and articles. It never ceases to amaze me that such a show can even begin to call itself “successful”.

Well now we have a recent discussion from the show, about the recently stricken Senator Tim Johnson and his ailment.

Joy Behar: “Is there such a thing as a man-made stroke? In other words, did someone do this to him?”

Alexander: “Maybe they gave him polonium.”

O’Donnell [laughing]: “Oh no, no.”

Elisabeth Hasselbeck: “Let me ask you something. Why is everything coming from the liberal perspective a conspiracy? This is a conspiracy.”

Behar: “I know what this - that party is capable of.”

Apparently, the very folks who were expecting the crazies on the right to be praying to god for Johnson’s demise have decided not to wait, but to show THEIR true colors instead.

The man is ill, he has suffered something quite serious (bleeding in your brain is not comedy) and now we have folks like Joy Behar who are conspiring to a LARGE audience that somehow the GOP has caused this cranial bleeding to “get back their power”.

Normally I wouldn’t put it past a political party to pull political stunts to gain power (just look at the shift BACK left from center, post Nov. 7), but to joke about the possibility that ANYONE is trying to kill a man on national TV is not just sick, it borders on perverse and demented.