Same Sex Marriage Poll, Part 2

My last poll asked what legal thing you would plead the 5th to rather than having your family and friends find out that about.

Half the voters would rather go to trial for murder than admit they were a member of congress. I can't say I blame them.

A quarter wouldn't want people to know they were at a Carrot Top concert, so Carrot Top is twice as popular as Congress. According to this poll if Congress were to star in a movie it wouldn't be anywhere near as successful as Chairman of the Board which ranked 63 in the all time bottom of movies rankings, being beat by such classics as Mitchel and Laserblast.

No one was ashamed to be at a transvestite bar. For the record I've never actual been to one, not because I'd be embarrassed, but during my bar hopping days I didn't live near any.

So on to my next poll:

An earlier poll showed most of my readers think Same-Sex marriages “Are Fabulous”. When I came across this little article on questions not to ask a Same-Sex couple getting married. I thought of a poll.

I'm a Unitarian so Same-Sex marriages are something I grew up with, so most of those questions I wouldn't even think to ask. But I have found a few questions that are sort of Faux-pas. I'm wondering which ones you think shouldn't be asked.

On the honeymoon, can I watch?

Why not an unhappy, mournful wedding?

Will it be fabulous?

Will you have separate Bachelor/Bachelorette parties?

As always vote on the upper left hand side of the page.


By Darrell B. Nelson author of I KILLED THE MAN THAT WASN'T THERE

Shut-up Stupid Sunday: Fly me to the Moon

I can't believe I'm defending Newt Gingrich, sort of, but I am.

Newt has proposed having an American base on the Moon by 2021. All over the media people are mocking the idea as ridiculous. The idea is doable. The way Newt wants to do it is stupid, but the idea isn't. The Crux has goes into details in this article.

The one thing Newt isn't willing to commit to, and the reality based community knows is unlikely to happen, is putting forth a budget for the plan. Newt's plan without a budget is just completely gutting NASA to build an unsustainable Moon base that would be abandoned in 2022.

For a real Moon Base it would take the kind of money the US spent on air conditioning in Iraq during the war. The money is now there, we are out of Iraq, but getting the government to shift it to something useful is the hard part.

Just for the hell of it, let's say the government were to shift the $20 billion a year we used to spend on AC in Iraq towards setting up a Moon Base.

An important part of setting up a Moon Base is the ability to get there. The canceled Constellation program had this ability but lack of funding killed it when it was halfway. $8 billion was spent building the components and a lot of the project has been salvaged for continued research. Let's shoot for the Moon and give NASA $8 billion dollars a year more dedicated towards the launch hardware. By 2016 we could have a Ares V heavy lift launcher up and running carrying 188 metric tons to orbit.

Part of the Constellation Program is now unnecessary, the Ares I a vehicle designed to get humans into orbit. Newt spoke the truth when he said:

We will have commercial near-Earth activities that include science, tourism, and manufacturing, and are designed to create a robust industry precisely on the model of the development of the airlines in the 1930s, because it is in our interest to acquire so much experience in space that we clearly have a capacity that the Chinese and the Russians will never come anywhere close to matching.

This will happen no matter who is in the White House. Three companies plan on having human rated rockets flying by 2016. With an additional $2 Billion from my fantasy budget given out in contracts to do more Near Earth Orbital work, these companies could pursue a robust launch schedule.

I've used up half my fantasy budget now. The rest can be used on ground operations. Space Operations need power. $2 Billion dollars a year could be spent on Solar Energy Research. This would be about the same amount as the private US Solar Energy Industries makes in exports. With that kind of money the US would become the leader in Solar Energy systems and Solar panels would be at least one quarter the weight and cost they are now.

This would also free the US from our reliance on foreign oil as the amount of energy we would get from Solar Energy would be huge.

Any Moon Base would also need to be self-sustaining so I'll give another $2 Billion towards research in self-sustaining technologies. Advanced recycling, energy efficiency, low energy material processing. All these technologies could be used on Earth as well giving our economy a boost.

Finally, to have a robust space program you need a very well educated workforce. I'd give the remaining $6 Billion out in Pell Grants, giving students a third more money towards college. So cost wouldn't be the major factor in pursuing a degree.

Given this extra budget, by 2020 when it comes time to build the Lunar Base we would have a robust Near Earth Orbit infrastructure, the technology for a sustainable Moon Base and an educated workforce. The $5 Billion per year it would take to keep the base operational in its first couple of decades would come from the $8 Billion a year I used to build the original hardware.

All it takes is the same amount of commitment that we had towards keeping our troops cool so they could go out and kill brown people.

So to the people who laugh at Newt Gingrich's idea of a Moon Base, I say, “Shut-up Stupid, don't laugh at the idea as being impossible because it isn't. All it takes is a level of commitment and an approach that helps all the people of this country. So you should laugh at Gingrich as commitment and helping the people of this country are not things he has ever shown he was willing or able to do.”

By Darrell B. Nelson author of I KILLED THE MAN THAT WASN'T THERE

Discount Tire Direct

Wow!

A marketing buzz phrase is, “Wow the Customer.” Most places say it but don't do it. I had to become a customer for Discount Tire Direct and here is what I have to say: “Wow!”

We had a ice and snow storm a few weeks ago. I learned to drive on the Canadian Border so I didn't think much of it. Then I made a stupid mistake.

I was pulling out on to the road and turned my tires too sharp, the car snowplowed and went straight into the curb at 5mph. It was a solid hit on the front passenger rim. I continued to drive and the car started shaking violently at 5 mph.

As a former Network Engineer I looked at this as an Engineering problem, so I turned the car off for 20 seconds and turned it back on. Amazingly that didn't fix it. So did what I would do if a network slowed down, I got out of the car and got back in. That didn't work either.

I drove home at 40 mph, the car would shake off the road if I went faster. The next morning, I took it to my mechanic at Precision Auto and they swapped the rear tire with the front and put the spare on the rear. That worked but I need a rim.

They searched for a week and finally found one at a junkyard 60 miles away. I took it to my tire shop and found it didn't fit.

After all this I searched for some answers and went online. It turns out that the Nissan Sentra uses a 4x114.3 mm (4x4.5") bolt pattern, if you have this bolt pattern it means that in a former life you committed a crime against nature so heinous that hell has no punishment great enough for proper justice.

While online I noticed a link to Discount Tire Direct I figured it couldn't hurt to try.

My salesman was Wyatt, and at first I worried as he was so confident the rim he recommended would fit. After my week of bad luck I thought he might be overconfident. But he shipped out the tire and it arrived the next day. Discount Tire Direct has an awesome shipping dept. It cost me $70 for the super cool looking rim, a used steel one would cost over half that, if I could find one. After over a week of searching I was pretty sure I couldn't.

Sure enough the tire fit like he said it would, but there was a problem. My lugs didn't fit the smaller holes in the rim. It took special lugs.

I called Wyatt back in a panic, he told me to calm down and he sent out the lugs and the special socket for it, free of charge.

Now I have great looking rim, that really makes my Sentra look snazzy. If I ever have this problem again I know it can be fixed in a day, and life is wonderful thanks to Wyatt and Discount Tire Direct.

As soon as I save up a little money I'll get a matching rim. But I wondered what the Sentra would look like with all four tires on good rims. A quick session in Photoshop showed it would look pretty cool.

By Darrell B. Nelson author of I KILLED THE MAN THAT WASN'T THERE