TripAdvisor - Cities I've Visited (Kevin)

1. Paris, France
2. San Francisco, CA, USA
3. Seattle, WA, USA
4. Glen Arbor, MI, USA
5. Ann Arbor, MI, USA

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Texting While Driving PSA

Utah Texting While Driving PSA 1085-Echo: A Texting Tragedy: "The video tells the story of two Utah men who were killed by the actions of another texting driver."

I really hope that people get it. I cannot tell you how happy I am that it's illegal now in Michigan.

iPhone 4

Thanks for coming out, Apple. According to this article on CNN, they're basically saying that the issue is not a factor. Not sure what Apple's issue is with this and why they're denying that it's a problem. Remember when your parents told you that "everyone else is doing it" isn't a good enough reason for YOU to do something? Yeah, me too. They're going to lose a lot of customers with this stumble...

It's pretty but you'd better not touch!

While the new iPhone 4 was suppose to have a brilliant new antenna that doubled as the external frame, touching it in the wrong way will decrease the devices reception. According to this article at Tomshardware.com (and other various articles popping up everywhere), just holding the new iPhone can cause you to drop calls. Yeah yeah yeah, call me an Apple hater... but isn't this the simple type of problem that would be obvious during pre-release testing? It appears that the current solution is to purchase the $29 colored rubber band "case" from Apple but that seems ridiculous to me that Apple would even charge anyone for it at this point. Maybe they just wanted to rush the new phone to the market in a cash grab while everyone is still euphoric over the iPad... I'm not sure. Regardless, it sounds like they need a fix... quickly.

Wow ... let's just outlaw competition ... it sure seems like we're headed there!

Okay, so this isn't the in the USA, but it (link here) sure sounds like something someone would try to pull here, too.  A children's soccer league on Ottawa, Canada, has now created a new rule in the interest of fairness ... If a team wins by 5 or more goals they automatically lose.  Yup, if you win by "too much," that's considered unfair so you lose.

What is this world coming to?  I know as a parent we don't like to see our kids feel pain or have them get their butts kicked in a sport or anything else, but come on.  Why not have our kids learn about lopsided losses now when it's a recreational soccer game so they know how to cope with a big loss of failing a college exam or not giving a good presentation at work?

I actually like some of the quotes from the parents:

“Heaven forbid when these kids get into the real world. They won’t be prepared to deal with the competition out there.”


“If there’s one team that’s consistenly dominant and one team that’s not, well, that’s life.”

Great Thomas Sowell Column entitled 'The Real Public Service'

I read this column today for the first time (it was originally published in May of 1999), but it is just as appropriate today.

This is my favorite quote from the column:

"Those who have helped the poor the most have not been those who have gone around loudly expressing "compassion" for the poor, but those who found ways to make industry more productive and distribution more efficient, so that the poor of today can afford things that the affluent of yesterday could only dream about."


I only wish more people realized this is true ...

Shocker! Canadians are realizing they can't afford socialized medicine!

According to this article at Yahoo! News, Canadian provinces are taking measures to reduce costs in their government-paid healthcare service.

I, for one, am completely not shocked.

In Canada and much of the developed world many people have this wonderful idea that government can help solve many of the problems that face us today so we ask it to do things like pay for our medical care.  This sounds wonderful because everyone in a developed country should have medical care, right?  The problem is, most of us believe that the government is high inefficient and not really that good at doing many of the things it is supposed to do (2010 Census anyone?) so why on earth would we believe they can do something as complex as medical care for everyone very well?

So much for Canada having this model health care system that we need to emulate here in the USA!