My pipe has succeeded in calming my nerves while simultaneously jolting me with enough nicotine to finish up my statement of purpose for four different graduate schools (the personal touch is necessary, of course). Thank the good Lord for tobacco.

And for all the naysayers who'll call me stupid for indulging in this "sinful" activity (not by my definition, nor the Church's), what's good enough for Einstein is good enough for me.

Also: Reason.

...because if he is right (and so far I think he has given the best reasons for Obama running in 2008) then Obama may be president. Scary.

Moderate drinking is good.

"We didn't think going in, for heaven's sake think before we pull out 15 combat brigades."
- Pat Buchanan

That more or less echoes my sentiments.

Senator James Inhofe, the outgoing chairman of the Environment & Public Works Committee, has released to the public his commitee's 64-page pamphlet called, “A Skeptic’s Guide to Debunking Global Warming Alarmism. Hot & Cold Media Spin Cycle: A Challenge to Journalists who Cover Global Warming" (pdf).

Brilliant. That's all I can say. Within the first few pages you get a sense of the amount of bull peddled by eco-psychos. Particularly interesting is the "hockey stick" idea and the isolation David Deming receives when it is found out that he doesn't want to work to erase an established scientific idea solely because it contradicts the idea of global warming.

Global warming proponents are currently in the shut-down-debate stage. They're at the point where the idea of global warming has been repeated ad nauseam and the public has almost completely accepted a far-out hypothesis as fact. Now they are trying to shut down debate with cries of "consensus." How do you know someone is losing a debate? They try and stop the other person from even getting their idea out there. Global warming proponents are doing just that: stifling debate in the hopes that no one hears the views of the skeptics. Hopefully that won't be the case.

If you broke a law and then advertised your crime in the newspaper, could you honestly get mad when the police came an arrested you? Of course not.

Up in Canada, two gay men decided to get "married" and the post an announcement in the paper. The priest at their Church informed them that he had direct orders from the archbishop of the diocese to deny them Holy Communion and relieve them of any leadership duties at the parish.

Now the two men are upset that this action was taken against them.

Give me a break. The Catholic Church's opposition to homosexual activity is well-known -- it is a mortal sin. Catholics are also to refrain from receving the Eucharist in a state of mortal sin. These two men advertised the fact that they were living in a state of mortal sin, and the priest and archbishop were completely justified in denying them Communion. In fact, not only were they justified, but they were courageous given the ultra-PC attitude currently infecting all of the West, and given Canada's law allowing same-sex marriage.

Only someone with a post-Kinesey, hyper-sexualized worldview could read a hug from a four-year old as inappropriate sexual conduct. What is this world coming to?

It's sad that instead of getting angry at the lowlifes who perpetuated the Abu Ghraib abuse, people are mad at the one man with enough courage to report them. He saw fit to hold his own military to a higher standard than those guilty of abuse, and he should be commended for that, not threatened.

First, let me start by saying I'm not the biggest fan of Christmas music. In fact, some of it gets downright stale after a few listens, and given that radio stations start playing it about a month before the holiday, I'll often be more than tired of it by Christmas. This is not the case with the amazing band/orchestra known as Trans-Siberian Orchestra. I received their masterpiece, The Christmas Trilogy, last year, and I have been listening to it intermittently since then. Can you imagine that? Christmas music all year round? Me neither, but I love it.

Let me explain a little about the band and then a bit about The Christmas Trilogy. Trans-Siberian Orchestra was founded by Paul O'Neill, Jon Oliva and Paul Kinkel back in 1996. If you don't know O'Neill, he's a fairly big shot in the music industry, having been a producer for such bands as Aerosmith and Savatage. The trio's idea was to create a rock opera of sorts that played Christmas carols. Except it's not exactly a rock opera, it's more a progressive metal opera. It features electric guitars, bass, drums, everything you'd find in a good metal band, plus a 60 piece orchestra, a handful of different singers, a choir, etc.

TSO has put out four different albums: one non-Christmas one entitled Beethoven's Last Night and three Christmas albums. I'd give you the names of them, but I don't think they're worth buying individually. That's not to say they aren't great albums by themself -- they are. It's just that they are packaged together and sold as The Christmas Trilogy, which I think is a great deal.

The music itself is, well, brilliant. I was first attracted to TSO because of two songs I had heard of theirs: "Christmas Eve/Saravejo 12/24" and "Wizards in Winter." The former is the hard rock version of "Carol of the Bells" that you might be familiar with. The latter is the song that accompanies the now-famous synchronized Christmas lights video that circulated the Internet last year. I liked those songs because they reminded me of power metal: they were bombastic, instumentally scintillating masterpieces. I'm a huge fan of power metal, so once I heard those two songs, I did some research on the band and discovered O'Neill's connections to Savatage, which is a power metal band. I immediately dropped the necessary hints to ensure that I would receive the Christmas Trilogy from my grandmother on Christmas.

And much to my enjoyment, I found that the rest of the music on The Christmas Trilogy is just as good as the first two songs I had heard. Some was even better. And the best part was: the music is incredibly varied. The three discs have 57 tracks on them spanning a total of about 204 minutes, or about 3.5 hours (there's also a bonus DVD on there which is great) and each and every track is different. I was a bit worried that the tracks would all start to sound the same because TSO was simply running with a money maker. I'm pleased to say this is not the case. The music does flow together, but that's simply because each disc is comprised of a self-contained narrative, and even though two songs may differ in tempo, melody, etc. they flow together in some way. I found that the electric guitar was not overused as well. I was wondering how far TSO could take the electric guitar with Christmas music, and I found that they often opt to let other instruments lead or to simply drop the guitar from the song. I'll be honest though, I'm not a music critic, so I don't know how to describe the music in such a way that you'll understand the points I'm trying to make. I'll end this part of the post by saying the music is simply beautiful, often with heavy religious themes (refreshing in this age of secularism), and I'll let you experience some of it:

"Christmas Eve/Saravejo 12/24"



"Christmas Canon Rock"



I honestly don't think you can find better Christmas music out there. I'd recommend everyone check out the Amazon link I posted at the top of the page (or just click here) and sample some of their song clips. The Christmas Trilogy is only $30 bucks from Amazon right now. That's a steal for such beautiful music.

I don't know why I have a sudden inkling to do a minimum wage post, but I do. Perhaps it's that the Democrats will almost definitely try to increase the minimum wage come January, or the fact that both houses in my state legislature and passed legislation to raise the minimum wage. I'm not go too deep into all the negative economic effects, I'll just look at the theory behind why minimum wage is bad.

First, let's look at the supply and demand curve (yes, it's rudimentary looking, but all I have at home here is Paint, and you can't do much with that.


Everyone probably remembers this graph from economics. The demand and supply in this case refer to the demand and supply of labor. In the graph above, the price for labor is at equilibrium, which is determined by the market. Some people in this equation may be priced out of the labor market, but c'est la vie.

Now, here's the graph when a minimum wage law is put in place:



Again, rudimentary, I apologize, but this is as good as I'm going to make it ( given that I should be working on a take-home final due tomorrow in my political science class). Here we see a blue dot where the minimum wage line intersects with the demand curve, and a rod dot where it intersects with the supply curve. What does this mean? First, because the minimum wage line is horizontal, we see that price is a constant (this makes sense, right?). Second, we see that because of this arbitrary increase in price, the supply of labor is much greater than the demand for labor. Put another way, more people want jobs than there are jobs available. And that's why minimum wage laws are bad.

Fin.

Katie at Elocutio has responded to a fellow Cor Jesu alum who castigated her and asserted that being Catholic and being a Democrat is only morally problematic at times. Katie responds with a well-composed, thoughtful piece. Here's a highlight:

"For me, political involvement is not just a hobby, it is a moral imperative. I, like you and all other Catholics, have a moral obligation to work against the non-negotiable evils." (apologies, the tab function seems to be broken in IE here)

Make sure to head over to her blog and check it out.

Good news if you're a socialist in New York. Bad news for intelligent, liberty-loving Americans. And yes, those two groups of people are mutually exclusive.

Mike Adams' columns are always entertaining and funny, but I don't always agree with him. At times he's just a bit hyperbolic and a little bit too neoconservative. So, when I read the title for his newest column, A Letter in Support of Keith Ellison, I suspected a highly sarcastic piece lampooning Ellison's desire to take the oath of office on the Koran.

So, I was pleasntly surprised to see that Adams was actually writing in support of Ellison. The points he makes are essentially the same ones I would make. I'm surprised to see so many "conservatives" suggesting that Ellison has to take the oath on the Bible. If the situation were reversed in some Islamic countries, conservatives would be crying bloody murder, demanding religious freedom. I would be joining them. So it makes no sense to turn around and tell a religious minority in this country that they have to fall in line with the predominant religion.

I'm not rejecting the melting pot idea, I'm just saying that though the melting pot is a valuable goal for our culture, it cannot trump liberty.

(For my review of the Wii, scroll down to below the first picture)

Well, most people have heard of it by now, even the non-gamers. It's the Nintendo Wii, what the media had been referring to as the "also-ran" video game console, but has suddenly become the "dark horse." Most people have heard of Nintendo and have some idea of what they do. They are a video game company, and they produce both hardware and games. They've been in the business a long time and had the first truly successful video game console -- Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES. I've owned every Nintendo console since then (including that one), so I had been looking forward to the Wii for about two years, ever since it was announced.

Unfortunately, a few thing happened that prevented me from obtaining one the first day. First, the day pre-orders were made available, I forgot to set an alarm and slept in and missed them all. I then decided that I didn't one on the first day badly enough to wait in line for hours, so I tried to snag one on Amazon.com and failed miserably. For the next week, I was able to play on my friend's and girlfriend's Wiis (her dad happened upon a bunch in Costco), but I was getting anxious. I didn't need a Wii, but I certainly wanted one. So, my brother, my cousin and I camped outside a Gamestop on Black Friday -- we got there around midnight -- to snag our own. While there, we almost got in two fights, but when 7 a.m. rolled around, all three of us left the store with our Wiis, the last three of them that the store had, actually.



Okay, enough story, time for the review. I doubt that there are a large amount of gamers on Townhall.com, so this review is aimed more toward parents wondering whether they should indulge their child's demands to get them a video game system. I'm here to be that voice on your shoulder (be it the angel or demon, it's up to you) who's telling you to go ahead and indulge them. Why? I'll tell you.

My parents object to video games for several reasons. Perhaps they're too violent, or they serve as a tool that isolates children, or they're expensive. All good reasons, to be sure. Violent video games can desensitize people to violence, and there's no reason that children should be playing shoot 'em up games, or anything of the sort. They also have traditionally been an activity that does not engender much social interaction. And finally, most people have heard of the nightmarish prices attached to some of them. I'll answer each of these concerns.

First, are video games on the Wii violent? Yes, some of them are. But a lot of them aren't. Consider this: I'm 21, and have four video games for the Wii. One of them is Wii Sports, which includes baseball, bowling, tennis, golf, and boxing drawn up in a cartoonish style. The only "violent" game is boxing, but it is not the type of violent most parents are concerned about. I also own Excite Truck, an arcade-style racing game; Super Monkey Ball, a game in which the point is to manuever monkeys in balls through mazes; and The Legend of Zelda, an adventure game in the vein of Lord of the Rings. The most violent of these games is the last -- Zelda -- and even then it is non-bloody, PG-13 action. My point is, there are plenty of games out there for the Wii -- the majority of them, actually -- that are non-violent and extremely fun. The Wii even has a parental control option that lets parents put a code on the system that will lock minors' access to games with certain ratings.

Second, does the Wii isolate children and limit social interaction? Depends on how you use it. The system is called "Wii" because, as Nintendo has said, they are trying to associate it with "We." The system is meant to be played with friends and family. My three college buddies and I would regularly play Mario Kart on the Nintendo Gamecube -- Nintendo's last system -- and have people either leave the room or just sit there and watch us. Why? Because the game did not appeal to them. People are turned off by video games because they require knowledge of complicated controllers. Why would a non-gamer play a video game that that features a half-hour to hour learning curve? But this is not the case with the Wii. Here is the basic controller (actually called a Remote by Nintendo) for the Wii:



Now, the gizmo on the left is actually not required for many games. Most of the games in Wii Sports (except for boxing) only use the thing on the right. And even then, very few buttons are necesary. How is this possible? Nintendo Wii features motion-sensor technology, which means that video games are no longer the lazy man's activity. In Wii Bowling, you actually are making motions with the Remote that you would make while bowling. In Tennis, you swing the Remote (it comes with a wrist strap to prevent flying Remote accidents) as if you are hitting the tennis ball, and the Wii senses a difference between forehands and backhands, top spin and bottom spin. The Wii was originally to be called the Nintendo Revolution, and I think it should have been. Instead of the same four of us always playing video games, I now see people who have never touched video games giving the Wii a try (including my parents and a lot of women -- traditionally a non-gaming population). The result is, as happened last night, eight people in one room taking turns playing ten frames of bowling (up to four players at a time) laughing at gutter balls and cheering/jeering at strikes. Simply put, the Wii is fun. There is no reason that the entire family cannot enjoy this system. Check out this commercial by Nintendo that exhibits a lot of the things the Wii can do:



Finally, the Wii is cheap, comparatively. The Xbox 360 costs either $300 or $400 (for the cheap version or upgraded version respectively) whereas the PS3 costs either $500 or $600. On the other hand, the Wii is only $250 and comes with Wii Sports free. It also features Wi-fi access that connects the system to the Internet. Later down the road, online play will be available. And for all you old-school gamers out there that now have kids, Nintendo will be offering classic games from NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, Turbografix, and N64 for online purchase and download to the Wii for $5-10. Of course, there are other costs to the Wii the Remotes are $40 and the Nunchuck add-on (the gizmo on the left) is $20. The system comes with one of each, but it'll still cost $180 to end up with four remotes and nunchucks. However, the prices for the Xbox 360 and PS3 controller are about the same, but the games for the these two systems are more expensive that the $50 Wii games. I'm not arguing that the Wii is dirt-cheap. People on a tight budget probably should look for something else, but if you can afford a few hundred bucks, the Wii is well worth it, and much cheaper than the other video game systems.

There are many things I haven't touched on concerning the Nintendo Wii, such as the Mii channel. And I haven't really reviewed any of the games, that's why I'm leaving you with all these links for interested parents. Here are some mainstream reviews of the Wii:

• Review: Wii console fun for novice gamer

• Battle of the Boxes: Playstation 3 vs. Wii

• Getting Everybody Back in the Game

• Gamers say Wii has PS3 beaten

So, in closing, I wholeheartedly recommend the Nintendo Wii to anyone considering purchasing a video game console.