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The new James Bond movie Quantum of Solace is set to open later this week.  The last one, Casino Royale, was good, but it had two problems.  The first was that it was a Sony Picture movie displaying Sony shots of Sony products.  Some parts seemed more like Sony ads than a real movie, such as when he is viewing the Sony security camera footage on Sony TVs using Sony players, or when he is sailing on his Sony boat and he looks at his Sony laptop.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t a Sony boat.  But if Sony had made boats, I’m sure they would have been featured prominently.  The other problem is a smaller one, but one from which Tomorrow Never Dies suffered badly: explaining too much to the audience.  In that one, the actors explained what they were doing as they did things.  Very annoying.  At least Casino Royale had a secondary actor “narrating” to help out the audience.  Something like whispering “He has the 5 and 7.  He needs the 6 to win.” to someone else while Bond is playing poker.  But enough with the trivial complaints.

According to one interview I read, Barbara Broccoli, the producer of the Bond movies, has said that Quantum is the name of the Sinister Organization that Bond is fighting.  Quantum is really QUANTUM, an acronym in the tradition of SPECTRE, but QUANTUM is so secret that not even she knows what it means.  So, to help her out, I have some suggestions of what it could mean.

What does Quantum stand for?  Try …

• Quit Using Acronym Names To seem Ultra-Mysterious
• Quest to Undertake Another National Target by a Universal Mob
• Quintessential Underworldly Archenemy, Needed To Upset MI6
• Quarrelsome Underground Association of Nuclear Threats and Undermining Morale
• Quiet, Unassuming Agent Negotiates The Ultimate Movie
• Quipping, Urbane Agent Neutralizes The Underling’s Moves

The last two apply more to Bond than to QUANTUM, but I liked them so I included them.  If you have any more suggestions, please add them in a comment.  Thanks.

“For nothing is hidden, except to be revealed; nor has anything been secret, but that it would come to light.”
– Mark 4:22

My earlier post had been about how sports seasons need to be distinct seasons and not last the whole year.  This post applies that same idea to holidays, mainly Christmas.

What prompted this was the local radio station‘s switching to the all-Christmas-music format on November 1st.  At least they waited until after Halloween.  But I’m still boycotting them temporarily.  Until Thanksgiving, I am skipping right past them (and any other Christmas-music stations) during my normal station-flipping during my drive home each day.

My favorite line from The Incredibles is something like “When everyone’s special, the no one is.” For the record, that line appears twice, but in two different forms.  The first one is by Dash, who says, in response to being told that everyone is special, “Which is another way of saying no one is. ”  The second one is by Syndrome, who says “And when everyone’s super, no one will be.”

That line, combined with the example of Marie Antoinette, gives a good idea of why seasons need to be short.  The longer they’re drawn-out, the more diluted they become.  Marie Antoinette, for those who don’t know, is attributed with having everything she wanted, so she was quite bored (“nothing tastes“).  Life was not enjoyable for her, because nothing was special.

Keep Christmas (and other holidays) special: don’t start anything Christmas-y  until after Thanksgiving.  I know some of you may think this post violates that principle.  I’m not saying don’t mention Christmas until then, just don’t promote it or start celebrating until then.

“But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it.”
– Romans 8:25

Keep the electoral vote.  It’s the vote for the president of the United States, not a vote for the president of the people.

I don’t want to live in the People’s Republic of America – I like the idea of separate States.  The current system has worked for quite some time, and I think eliminating the electoral college, whether by actually removing it or by awarding electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote, will have some unforeseen negative consequences.  I know, I know, some people don’t like the record of the electoral college.  But remember, the states elected the president – the people didn’t elect him.  The popular vote doesn’t matter.  The United States is not a democracy; it is a representative democracy (AKA republic).  Those who don’t like the electoral college want to tinker with how the country was setup.

The problem is that the movement to mess with the electoral college system is calling itself the National Popular Vote something.  How can you oppose something that’s so popular?  What would the opposing movement be called: the Unpopular Vote?  That would never fly.

Keep states’ rights as more important than the federal government – keep the electoral system intact.  Don’t move toward one big federal government.  On the other hand, the states do have a right to send their electoral delegates however they want.  So wouldn’t allowing the states to send mixed delegates also be supporting states rights?

Most of the arguments for the change are to have every vote count and to convince presidential candidates to spend time and, here’s the key, money in their state.  Hey, if you want candidates to campaign in your state, maybe you should use some sort of incentive (tax breaks, subsidies, etc.) to attract the non-dominant party’s voters to live in your state!  That way your state could be more competitive in the presidential campaigns and we wouldn’t have to mess with the proven record of the electoral college.

Or you could make your state more appealing to businesses in general so that more of them would setup operations in your state.  That way, you wouldn’t care so much that presidential politicians weren’t spending time and money in your state – you would be getting money from businesses that are productive and useful (as opposed to political campaigns, which are counter-productive and mostly useless).

The part I was wondering about was the re-count.  If there is a close presidential election, say a difference of a few thousand, then where will the re-count occur?  If there is a contested state in the current electoral system, then the recount can be limited to that state or a certain county.  But if the loser of the election wants to challenge a close national vote, wouldn’t the whole country have to be re-counted?  You don’t want the individual candidate to be hand-picking a state or county to re-count.

Why was baseball playing so late in the year?  Their schedule is too long, so they get what they deserve by having a game canceled by snow.  The 2008 baseball season started in late March.  The playoffs started in October, which means they had 6 over full months of regular season.  At least they kept the playoffs and championship to under a month.

The baseball season is way too long; baseball is being selfish by hogging half the year.  Here are my proposed rule changes, to be enacted by the Secretary of Sports (a new bureaucracy to be imposed by the new administration in Washington) – each sport gets 4 months, plus an extra month for playoffs and 2 weeks for the championship.

We’ll start with football, since it’s the best sport.

• Football gets fall, which is September, October, November, and December for regular games.
• Hockey gets winter, which is January, February, March, and April.
• Basketball has to share with hockey, but I think that the fan bases of each are okay with that.
• And baseball gets summer, which is May, June, July, and August.

Initially I was going to give each sport 3 months, so that the 4 major sports are evenly divided throughout the year.  But 3 months isn’t quite long enough, plus the playoffs would go into the next sport’s season anyway, so I settled on 4 months.

• Football stays the same – 4 months of regular season plus one month of playoffs and one week of championship.
• Hockey loses a month and a half, at the beginning of the season, plus May for playoffs and June for the championship.  So the last part stays the same.  That may need adjusting, because ice hockey should not be played in June.
• Basketball is in the same boat as hockey, which is fine, because they each had eight months of regular season plus championship stuff.  If you add in pre-season, it gets even worse.  A sports season should not take up the majority of the year – it needs to be but a season.
• Baseball loses the most, because it is the most bloated.  It started in late March and went through all of October.  If you add in the pre-season (late February for baseball), there are only 3 months of the year without baseball.

Since baseball uses about a month for the playoffs and championship, they would be done by the end of September.  Much better.

“There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven”
– Ecclesiastes 3:1

Parental Jobs
I spent about 3 weeks on the basement windows (it took 3 weeks because I usually couldn’t do anything on weekdays).  My sons got used to heading to the basement to help me with the windows.  The older one wanted to hammer and tape things together, while the younger one wanted to cut apart the cardboard box with the hacksaw.

After the windows were done, I overheard the boys playing upstairs one evening.  I forget what they had (stuffed animals or boxelder bugs (yes, they like playing with live bugs) or what), but they had a pretend family.

What I heard was this:
“I’m the daddy, and I’m working in the basement.”
So that’s the picture they have of something daddies do.

Then I heard this:
“I’m the mommy, and I’m talking on the phone.”
I have no clue where they got that idea.

Dinner
The other night, I had dinner responsibilities so that my wife could nap.  She had a late lunch and was tired, so she postponed her dinner in favor of rest.  The boys and I were hungry and not tired, so we ate.  Dinner consisted of pancakes and eggs (leftover from earlier that day) for them and hamburger and fries (also leftover from earlier that day) for me.  I also broke out the chips and salsa.

The boys are particular about their syrup now.  They want the syrup in a bowl so it doesn’t get all over the plate.  That way they can dip whatever piece of food – preferably pancake, although I did see a piece of popcorn in there later – in the syrup and it won’t contaminate the rest of the food.  So I obliged them and poured a bit of syrup into bowls, one bowl per child.

I had to step out of the dining room into the kitchen for some reason – drink refill or put something away.  The kids were about halfway through their dinner.  When I came back, the older child informed me that the other child drank all his syrup out of his bowl.  I looked at his bowl and, sure enough, the syrup was gone.  Well, as gone as syrup can be.  It doesn’t drain very easily.

Needless to say, we didn’t have dessert that evening.

“My son, eat honey, for it is good, Yes, the honey from the comb is sweet to your taste;”
– Proverbs 24:13

Inspired by my brother’s success story of how well his basement was improved by glass-block windows, I decided to have glass block installed in my basement.  Also, my wife had been mentioning that it would be a good thing to do.  I called a local glass-block window installer, and he quoted $360 ($120 for the 3 windows).  In case you’re comparing your own basement windows, mine were 33 inches wide by 17 inches tall, so the glass block windows use 8 inch by 8 inch blocks, 4 wide and 2 high.

I felt like not spending that much money, so I declined his quote and decided to do it myself.  My wife, knowing how I like to start projects but not finish them, gave me a deadline of one month.  It was the beginning of October when I bought the materials, and she said if they were not installed by November 1st, I had to return the stuff to the store.  Two of the three windows were done on October 18th, and the third one was installed on the 25th, so I beat the deadline.  I just need to grout the joints of the last window, and it’s done.

Was it worth it?  I spent $98.45 per window, saving $21.55 per window or $64.65 overall.  But I spent 11 hours on the project, making my hourly rate about $5.88.  Maybe it would have been better to hire the guy.  But now I have experience installing glass block windows, and I got to spend quality time with my sons as they helped me with the project, and it’s not like I would have earned $60 more dollars if I had those 11 hours to do something else.

The main improvement is that there is now natural light in the basement.  Before, because they were so old and in bad shape, the windows were boarded over, so that room in the basement had only a single light bulb.  Now, during the day, I don’t need to turn on the light bulb because there is so much light.  The old windows were wood-framed and single-pane.  So they let in water and outside air, and let out the inside air (which, with winter starting and the furnace running, is not good).  The only thing the glass blocks let in is light.

Details:

Cost:

• glass blocks: 8 for $37.63 = $37.63 per window
• railings: 6 for $49.74 = $16.58 per window
• horizontal spacers: 3 for $13.05 = $4.35 per window
• vertical spacers: 20 for $25.18 = $1.26 per spacer or $7.56 per window (plus $2.50 in waste)
• sealant: 3 tubes for $17.64 = $5.88 per window
• grout: $26.40 or $8.80 per window
• lumber for  spacers: $49 = $16.33 per window
• caulk for spacers: $3.97 or $1.32 per window

Extra items that I’ll use again so they don’t count against this project:

• grout float: about $5
• grout sponge: about $2

Time:

• 2 hours (over 3 different occasions) of trips to the store to buy the materials
• 1 hour for setup
• 1 hour for tearing out the old windows
• 2 hours for installing the first window
• 1 hour for installing the second window
• 2 hours for installing the third window
• 2 hours for grouting

Setup consisted of opening the boxes, explaining each item to my two little helpers, taking price stickers off the windows, reading the instructions to figure out how to proceed, etc.   The glass blocks came in boxes of 8, so that was perfect for my situation.  The store sold assembled windows (a 4 by 2 block window), but they all came with the fresh-air vent, which I did not want.

The first window took a while, because of the learning curve, both of the glass-block installation procedure and also how to work with my basement window openings.  My window openings were about an inch or inch-and-a-half too big in each direction, so I had to install a board on each side to act as a spacer, making the window opening just a bit smaller so the glass blocks fit snugly.  My main problem was that the saw was upstairs in the garage, so I would measure a board, take it up to cut it, come back and install it, etc.  If I had the saw in the basement, where the work was occurring, that would have saved a lot of time.

The third window should have taken less than an hour to install, as I was getting faster with each window.  But that window had dirt piled around it outside, so I had to dig that away.  Then I discovered that the existing wood frame was rotten, from the wet dirt, so I had to cut out the rotten parts and replace them.  For the other windows I just left the existing wood and built onto it.

Here’s how much time it should take to install a window, if the opening is the right size.

• Cut railings and horizontal spacer to length: 10 minutes
• Install railings and glass blocks dry fit (assemble them in the window put don’t attach anything): 5 minutes
• Attach railings with screws and then place glass blocks with sealant: 10 minutes

So really, each window takes less than a half hour to install.  It’s just the preparation work that slows it down.  The grout doesn’t count in this time because the sealant has to cure for at least 24 hours before you can grout.  So wait for all the windows to be installed and cured, then grout them all at once.

Tips:

Cutting:

The railings and spacers are plastic.  My tip for cutting them is to start with a hacksaw and switch to a utility knife.  maybe my hacksaw was just getting dull, but it seemed like it was taking forever to cut each piece.  By the end, the method that worked best was to start the cut with the hacksaw, to get a straight line in the plastic – a groove for the utility knife to follow.  Once the groove was there, I ran the utility knife down the groove several times, attempting to bend the plastic after each run.  I guess the knife is more for scoring the piece than cutting it.  Once I could bend the plastic at the cut (the snap after the score – hey wait, this isn’t about football), the piece broke apart quite nicely and one more run of the knife finished the job.

Spacers:

If you have even more time than money, don’t buy the vertical spacers.  They are $1.26 per 8-inch spacer.  But they are the same as the horizontal spacers, just cut to size.  If you buy an extra 4-foot horizontal spacer and cut it yourself, it would be 40 inches / 8 inch spacers = 5 spacers for $4.35 or $0.87 per spacer.  On this project, that would have saved me (25.18 – 17.40 = 7.78).  But it would have taken at least an hour to cut the 18 pieces that I needed.  I think it’s not worth it.

Sealant:

The sealant gives some recommendation for how many blocks you can seal per tube, but I’ll give my experience here.  If you apply it sparingly, you could get one tube to last for 12 blocks (1.5 windows).  But I don’t recommend using it sparingly, so I suggest getting one tube for every 8 or so blocks.

Lumber:

For the lumber to fill the extra window space, I used 1x6s and 1/2x6s, about 27′ of length of clear pine.  That was the $49.  I could have saved some money by going for the lower grade of pine, and right now I don’t know why I didn’t.  Most of it is hidden, so it doesn’t need to be pretty.  I think I just didn’t want to be working around knots.

Grout:

The grout came in a medium-size bucket.  I mixed only half the powder, and that would have been enough for at least 10 windows.  So if you buy the 15-lb bucket of grout (and that’s the only size they carry), don’t use much of it.  I estimate a full bag would be good for 160 blocks.  I expect that an open bag of grout won’t keep indefinitely (it is plastic-lined to keep out moisture), so I don’t know what the point would be of using only a quarter of the grout and saving the rest.  That’s what helps the profit margin of the construction-products companies: people buy more than what they need and throw away the excess.  In this case, I would like to have bought a smaller container of grout mix, but I couldn’t.  And I could store the extra in an airtight container and save it for the next project, but I don’t know when that will be and storage space is at a premium.  So I’m just going to dispose of the extra grout mix when I’m done with the last window.

Hammering:

Even if you tell yourself you’re going to be careful, do not use a standard hammer around glass block. I was trying to adjust something next to the first window, just after I had installed the last block in that window. Unfortunately, the hammer missed its target slightly and broke a newly-installed glass block. Since the sealant was only a few minutes old, I could remove the block and install another one. But, as it was broken, that set me back about a half hour – removing the pieces, cleaning out the sealant from that opening, putting in new sealant, and putting in the new block. Little pieces of broken glass and sealant are not a good combination. So use a rubber mallet, not a hammer, around glass blocks.

With stem-cell initiatives on ballots and the election about a week away, I thought I would throw in my two cents about stem-cell research.  Not many people are against stem-cell research.  What people oppose is one source of stem cells – embryos.

There are other sources of stem cells, and adult stem cells have actual results and show progress.  Embryonic stem cells are touted as having the most potential – the possibility to cure such-and-such.  The only way to prove or disprove this potential is by experimenting with the stem cells.  If you need to experiment to discover or unlock the full potential of something, why not make that something an amoral something?  While embryonic stem cells are difficult to manage (they don’t cooperate very well), adult stem cells behave well, but with less potential.  It’s the classic trade-off: some cures now, or possibly more cures later.  Although the goal is worthy – curing diseases – the means to get there is not worthy if it involves using babies for their tissues.  Just because something can be done does not mean it should be done.

People can do all the research they want with adult stem cells, but why kill innocent children to get their stem cells?  What if a scientist approached you today and said he needed to kill you for your organs?  What if the scientific community agreed that organs from a [insert your age here]-year-old [insert your gender here] held the best potential for curing [insert disease here]?  Would that make it okay for them to end your life for the sake of research?  What’s the difference between that scenario and embryonic stem-cell research?  The only difference is age.  The embryos are zero years old, and they can’t protest or vote.

“But,” you may say, “the embryos are going to be discarded anyway.  Why not get some use out of them?”  Because people in this country are supposed to have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  And our government is supposed to secure those rights for all its people – including those who are zero years old.  Should people in need of organ transplants be allowed to raid orphanages?  Incendiary wording, I know, but don’t forget this is an election year so it’s allowed by the Federal Election Commission.

So if the choice is between discarding embryos and using them for research, research wins in a lesser-of-two-evils duel.  Extra embryos are one of the bad side effects of IVF.  But there is a third choice – one that is not evil.  The embryos do not have to be discarded.  Why not let them grow into adults?  There are plenty of organizations who will handle that for you, if you have embryos that you do not want.

I have heard some election ads that use families with special-needs children, saying that special-needs children could be helped by stem-cell research.  Again, it is true that they could be helped by stem-cell research.  But does it need to be embryonic stem cell research?  Families with special-needs children are more aware that embryonic stem-cell research is wrong, because they realize that embryos are nothing less than special-needs children.

Embryos are children, and they should not be used for research.  There are plenty of ways around this issue.  If you took all the money and effort that are spent trying to promote embryonic stem cells, and put that toward finding a morally acceptable alternative, research could be advanced and people would be happy.

The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and not of the internet itself.  Not endorsed by any candidate or candidate’s committee.