Bye Ted.

I sprained a finger last night playing ball. It's ugly and its swollen, so I really shouldn't be typing too much. But I couldn't let the day go by without somehow acknowledging the great loss our country suffered today. Ted Kennedy was not the greatest example of a human being. But he did care. And he worked on legislation that had affected just about everyone in this country today. Civil rights, medicare, prescription drugs. I"m sure people are out there writing much better thoughts on him, but just wanted to add my two cents.

It seems like a lot of big names are dying this year. Am I getting that old?

Good deal.

So since we've had kids, we average one trip to the movie theater a year. This year we saw Harry Potter. Last year we saw something called the Secret Life of Bees, and before that it was the one about the Rat in Paris. It's tough going to the movies so infrequently. Suddenly we've got so much vested. If it's a bad movie, we really really feel like we've wasted time. And knowing how most movies are, it makes us not even want to try.

And again given the kids, we would never make it to the video store. To have to pick something up and drop something off a couple days later. It just wouldn't happen. Ditto for the libraries. So really, Netflix is our only connection to the movie world. We managed about 5-10 movies a month. Sometimes it takes us three nights to watch a two hour movie.

I hear just the US puts out over 365 movies a year. Most of them probably aren't worth watching. But without Netflix we wouldn't watch anything. I was just thinking about what a deal it was for us.

Death Panels

I think Sara Palin has probably read about as much of the healthcare legislation as I have. (or less). But she and some others seem to have invented an issue out of thin air that is not in the legislation, but sounds like a great reason to oppose the legislation. And somehow this all becomes a news story.

I think like me, Palin may have recently watched the latest Harry Potter movie, and she's mixing up the notion of witches and wizards in black cloaks (Death-eaters) with what's going on in the real world.

As far as I can tell, there are no death panels. There was some talk about continued promotion of advanced directives, which doctors and lawyers would all recommend as being prudent ways of taking care of yourself. But somehow counseling on these directives have now become a euthanasia campaign.

How does one debate against a position not based in any reality? Really, now that she's not a governor or a VP candidate, we've got to stop paying any attention to the crazy lady.

California Constitution

Just some tidbits from Wikipedia on the California Constitution.

The 1879 Constitution of the State of California is the third longest in the world behind Alabama and India.

Between 1911 and 1986 it was amended over 500 times.

By 1962, it was over 75,000 words long. A Revision Commission removed about 40,000 words between 1964 and 1976.

There is a clause specifically shielding Stanford-owned property from taxes as long as it is used for educational purposes.

Repair California is pushing for a new constitutional convention to reform the following:
Structure of governance
Initiateve and referenda processes
Campaign Finance
Term Limits
Changing the 2/3 requirement for passing a budget
Revenue distribution between localities and the State.