Random Thoughts 5/12/12

• Happy Mother's Day tomorrow!  My life is richer thanks to the mom who raised me and the mom who raises my children.
• So is "Castle" ruined now?  It got renewed for another season but have we just lost one of the key reasons for watching it in the first place?
• Here's a long video, but a good one, where a former Soviet citizen tries to convert a young American (an Occupy Wall Street protester) to capitalism and conservative thinking.  Just let that soak in for a minute.
• I didn't notice at the time but my blog post about the KC Zoo getting penguins was supposed to have a video.  You can see a short video about the upcoming project here.
• True: the Saturday Night Live you watch today will never be as good as the SNL you watched ten years ago.
• This is your weekly reminder that man-made global warming is a hoax.  It's bad science, it's politically motivated, it's predictions are NOT happening, and cold weather kills more people than warm weather ever will.  See you next week!
• Here's an incredible video of baseball-sized hail hitting a neighborhood two weeks ago with an article explaining why bigger hail falls faster.  We had hail like that several years ago on a Sunday morning; it looked just this but the video doesn't capture the sound effectively.  The hail blew out the back window of my car (like the one in the video) and damaged a lot of roofs in the area.
• PBS doesn't allot quite enough time to air the BBC's "Sherlock."  So what got left on the cutting room floor?  See here.
• Does anyone really think the President's views evolved?  He obviously thinks the culture has shifted enough that he can openly state what he has probably always believed about homosexuality and marriage.
• We just passed 3000 coalition deaths in Afghanistan.  I didn't hear anything about it.  15 times this year, an Afghan soldier (or Taliban dressed as friendly soldiers) have attacked American or allied forces, resulting in 20 deaths, including an American just the other day.  It's only a minor footnote in the news.  Over the twelve years of conflict in Afghanistan, 65% of American deaths have happened in the last three years, under President Obama.  Why isn't any of this making the news?