Random Thoughts 8/7/12

• This is incredible: an abortion doctor went into an angry rant when pro-life people knocked on his door.  The doctor said, “I as a taxpayer do not wish for those babies to be born, and brought up, and kill those people in Colorado,” and “Let me see you adopt one of those ugly black babies.”  Wow.  Unfortunately, it's not news that the pro-abortion view overlaps significantly with racist eugenic philosophy.  To some, the plan is to kill those babies (he kept using the word "babies") to prevent crime, to save tax money on welfare, to get rid of the undesirables.  Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger openly campaigned for the reduction of undesirable populations (i.e. blacks, Hispanics, immigrants, the disabled, etc.).
• I voted today and proudly showed my photo I.D.  I didn't feel disenfranchised or discriminated against; it felt only right to prove that I was who I said I claimed to be.
• Zynga is kind of the sleazy dirtbag of video gaming.  Remember "Farmville" or "Mafia Wars"?  Zynga stole those ideas and got sued for them.  But the company has repeatedly produced note-for-note copies of successful games in what amounts to little more than thievery.  I'm not kidding, it's blatant copycatting.  Now they're big enough that suing them is too expensive (unless you're a big company like EA).  The only games they didn't blatantly rip off are the ones they've bought outright and relabeled as their own ("Words with Friends," "Draw Something").  I've played both of those games, but every time I see the Zynga splash screen, I feel dirty inside, like I'm contributing to hacks and piracy… because that's what it is.
• Voter fraud can have a huge impact.  A little voter fraud in Minnesota (ineligible convicts voting) helped turn a tight election, which made Al Franken the 60th Democrat in the Senate, which made Obamacare filibuster-proof, which may send us over a cliff financially like Greece.  All because of a few hundred questionable votes.
• I stepped on a toy last night and put all my weight on it.  That left a nasty little bruise on my foot, at the rear of the fifth metatarsal, and is hurting more than the typical lego-after-midnight injury.  Ouch!
• We've had over twenty days of 100+ temps this summer and over 70 days of drought.  Yuck.  This reminds me of summers as a child when the grass would die in July and we'd shoot bottle rockets out of the deep cracks in the ground.