Hyping your headlines

Today's airliner incident, a 737 aborted its takeoff. According to Fox TV News, the tires "exploded".
Yeah right. Any motorist knows that tires blow out, they don't explode.
But the writer's must think "explode" is catchier. Or maybe they are just ignorant. TV people are poorly educated.
But for those of us who drive or fly, "blow out" gets our immediate attention.

Words of the Weasel Part 24

Underperform. Fox News Speak (heard on air this morning) for lose. As in "Newt Gingrich may underperform in the Iowa Caucus."

Should party primaries be open?

Well, they are in New Hampshire. We allow voters to change their party affiliation at the polls on election day. And to change it back again on the way out the door. Party members often complain about this, saying it is wrong to allow non party members a voice in party candidate selection.
I disagree. To win office, candidates must attract votes from the undecided middle. The independents or the opposition. The way things are right now, about 30 percent of voters are die hard Republicans, who will vote Republican no matter what. Another 30 plus percent are yellow dog Democrats. And the remaining 40% of the electorate can vote for either side.
Allowing that 40% middle to have a vote in the primary helps nominate candidates acceptable to the middle, and thus have a chance of winning the general election.

Did Congress slip on over on us?

The news is full of talk about the "payroll tax reduction" bill that might have passed the House yesterday. Actually it's the FICA tax they are talking about. Used to be, FICA was levied only on the first $110k of income, income over that limit was not subject to FICA.
According to Tax Prof here, the new law levies a 2% FICA tax on all income over the $110k cutoff point. That's a pretty stiff tax bite. And right out of the blue, too. This is the first I'd heard of this new "revenue enhancment".

Do your Christmas shopping in Littleton

Went out Christmas shopping yesterday. You gotta do it, websurfing and Amazoning just lacks the flavor of going into stores and looking at stuff and exchanging Merry Christmas greetings with strangers met in stores. Main drag of Littleton can be walked, lots of neato stores carrying stuff you can't find at Walmarts.
Much better than mall crawling.
Then we had family over to decorate the Christmas tree and consume a bit of Christmas cheer.
Merry Christmas.

Tis the season to go virus stomping

Got another one. This guy called him self "XP Antispyware 2012". He tries to look like he is official Microsoft issue, although he isn't. He throws up a window that looks like an anti virus scan and shouts about infections. And he gets into the registry and fixes it so that anytime you run an .exe file, he get run instead.
I'm so glad Microsoft gave us the Registry with the power to reprogram every part of Windows.
Fortunately good old Bleeping Computer had a fix for him.

Model Number, lack of

Trusty Hoover upright vac is running on it's last bag. So I note "Vacuum bags" on the shopping list on the refrigerator door. Then I look at the vac for a model number to put on the list. Damn, no model number or name (e.g. Supersucker 1234) on the vac. I turn it over, no luck. Hoover didn't bother.
So tomorrow I'll be in the supermarket looking at a dozen different dirt bags wondering which one will fit.