Go Rams!!!

I just got one thing to say...

GO RAMMIES!!!!

Beat CU!

Boy, am I gonna look dumb if we loose! But that ain't gonna happen! ;)

A *real* immigration plan

I think that the vast majority of Americans would agree that illegal immigration is a big problem and that something desperately needs to be done. Just how big of a problem it is and what should be done about it will differ depending on your location, politics, and even your line of work.

Congress has "tried" to work on this problem in the recent past to no avail. The House will figure something out, then the Senate won't like it, then the Senate will come up with something that the House scoffs at, softies call for amnesty, while hard liners call for mass-deportation. But basically, no one has any practical ideas that have any chance of success and no one seems to be able to compromise.

But U.S. Congressman Mike Pence from the 6th District of Indiana may have a solution. He and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison have authored the Hutchison-Pence No Amnesty Immigration Reform plan. This is a real compromise. It will leave both sides wanting something a little different, but I feel that it could get the job done.

Here are the three main steps:
First - Secure the borders
Second - Good neighbor S.A.F.E. Visa and Ellis Island Centers
Third - Verification and enforcement

The part that I like is that the certification (Ellis Island Centers) will be run by private (i.e.: efficient) businesses. But we shall see. My fear is that congress will get all pansy again and not pursue this before the elections. Maybe they will get to it before the end of the year.

How did they do it before?

Apparently, football used to be played a lot more like rugby is still played. 100 Years Ago today, Football's First Forward Pass was executed by St. Louis University when the coach was frustrated by his teams inability to move the ball. Of course, the first "projectile pass" was dropped by the reciever, but subsequent attempts must have worked better, since they won the game.

So what did they do before? Only hand-offs and laterals? Foward passing was actually against the rules until 1905 when it was prompted to be legalized by the deaths of several players(!) when things got a little too involved. Dang.

'The Path to 9/11'

This is going to be an event for the Tivo.

ABC (yes, ABC) has recently spent $40 Million to make a mini-series/docudrama entiteled "The Path to 9/11" that will air 10 and 11 of September without commercial interuption. This should be five hours of quality, pro-America programing that is such a rarity on today's mainstream media.

Read the well written review at FrontPage magazine.com of ABC's 'The Path to 9/11' by Govindini Murty.

That crazy fluid flow

This article in the July edition of the journal "Nature," Van Gogh painted perfect turbulence - The disturbed artist intuited the deep forms of fluid flow, could have just as easily been called "crazy guy interprets impossibly hard fluid dynamics." Or something to that effect. Maybe "get crazy, pass fluids!" (As in 'fluids' the engineering class, not actually the bodily passing of fluids. Eew.)

The point is, that it's pretty crazy that Van Gogh's crazy swirly paterns that made up a good portion of his famous works are rediculously accurate models of fluid flow. Even crazier, is the fact that this only worked when he was, well, crazy. His paintings done while he was medicated lack the detail and accuracy of his unmedicated works. Ah, absinth.

(Okay, just rechecked the link... Nature now wants you to pay $3 to read it... so screw them. Go to the Baylor College reprint instead.)