Posted on 24th June 2010 by Ben Krasner in Day to Day Goodies | University of Michigan Sports
Michigan Hockey, Michigan Stadium, Michigan State Spartans, Michigan Wolverines, The Big Chill
Our tickets came in the mail, today, for The Big Chill – a CCHA hockey game between the hockey teams of the University of Michigan and Michigan State University being held outdoors, in Michigan Stadium, in December of this year. 103,000 tickets have been sold for this game, so far, easily setting it up to be the biggest hockey game crowd in history.
Our seats are the same new club seats that we will be using for the football season and are located in section 302, on the south/southeast side of the stadium. Interestingly, we received these before we received our football tickets, even though the hockey game isn’t until weeks after the last home football game. Now, I can’t wait for the game to get here. It’s going to be quite the event.
Go Blue!
Posted on 9th June 2010 by Ben Krasner in Day to Day Goodies
Cuyahoga Public Library
I went ahead and applied for a Cuyahoga County Public Library card, today. It’s been years since I’ve had a library card and used a public library. If I recall correctly, I would have to say that the last time I used a public library was somewhere around 1994 and I couldn’t even tell you what I used it for – probably research for a paper in high school or something. Of course, in college, using the UGLI at the University of Michigan was common. But that was a massive library and a full online catalog and, let’s face it, I simply had to use it. This time around, I’m looking to investigate the catalog to see if I can at least preview some books before buying them or read some books without having to buy them. So I went online, filled out the application and my new library membership card is on its way to me.
My primary goal, here, is to get my hands on a number of books that I really don’t want to buy, but do want to read. Mostly, these would be reference books about business, investing, do-it-yourself books and fix-it manuals, and others might include cooking, travel and some IT books that are expensive and out of date as soon as they are published. This came about after seeing some books that I thought I wanted to buy but which ended up being examples of situations where you are looking at one book that is part of a series. So I’m standing there thinking that I surely don’t want to buy all of the books… can they really all be worth the money? Why do I want to buy 4 books so I can get the value I am looking for out of the one?
So we’ll see what happens. I’ve been browsing the online catalog for the library and it seems they do have a large percentage of these books that I am looking for at branches that are all pretty quick access to where we live. I have a card number and my cards will arrive in the mail, shortly. Might as well start getting some value out of those tax dollars we’ve spent funding the thing with, eh? The experience is set to begin, soon.
Posted on 31st May 2010 by Ben Krasner in Holidays
Memorial Day
Memorial Day weekend is upon us – and let’s get right to it. A heartfelt THANK YOU to all those men and women who have given their lives so that America can reign as THE country that offers hope to all of its citizens and to all those who wish to come here in seek of freedom and opportunity. Thank you for sacrificing so much when faced with tasks most would run away from if given the opportunity to do so. And an additional THANK YOU to all those men and women currently serving in our armed forces. Thank you for keeping our interests safe and our country strong both locally and abroad.
On a day where we sit back and relax with a barbeque, a race at a track or on TV, an adult beverage (or many adult beverages) or any other activity that we choose while enjoying a long weekend to unofficially kick off summer, we cannot forget all those souls that paid the ultimate price to pave the way for what we – and many other countries – have today. As a Jewish individual, I have a special emotional attachment to holidays like Memorial Day. Thousands upon thousands laid down their lives while taking on the Natzis who were systematically executing 6 million people who simply read the same scriptures – scriptures like the Ten Commandments and the book of Exodus – as I do. Almost never a day goes by where I don’t hear the star spangled banner and become emotional, and never more so than on a holiday like Memorial Day.
So whether you’re watching the Indy 500, the Coca-Cola 600, golf, baseball, a movie, your kids playing outside, or burgers cookin’ on your grill, please take a sober moment to say THANK YOU to someone … or just aim your sentiment to the sky… so that those that sacrificed their time, effort or lives for this country know that what they did was valued and has made life better for countless people that came after them. Toast to their life and what they gave, and for what we have the ability to plan for, tomorrow.
La-Cha’im! And THANK YOU!
Posted on 26th May 2010 by Ben Krasner in In The News | Politics - U.S. National
Barak Obama, BP, Oil Spill, Roy Blunt, Transocean
Republicans seem to have no trouble finding a microphone to spew rhetoric into and yet another example of that appeared today in a CNBC.com article about President Obama privately (okay maybe not too privately, apparently) telling members of his team and BP officials to “Plug the damn hole!” with regards to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Missouri Republican Representative Roy Blunt said in a statement, “[the government's] lack of contingency planning for this kind of catastrophe should be a wake up call.” He went on with, “The American people expect better from the federal government.”
My problem here is simply that it is abundantly clear Republicans are trying desperately to make this disaster in the Gulf a parallel to that of hurricane Katrina and the sluggish response by then President Bush and his team of folks that has me wanting to use the term ‘retarded’ here because of the words actual definition (slow, hindered, etc). In reality, the differences between the two responses have been as clear as comparing night and day, but Republicans believe (and unfortunately, might be correct) that if they just keep pounding away at the microphones that are available everywhere to speak into they will eventually win over enough ears of the sheep that believe just about everything they read.
If the current President of the United States were a Republican and his cabinet were a full stock of ‘pubs as well, and the response to this grave problem in the gulf were exactly the same, Republican members of the House and Senate would be lauding the efforts as tremendous and superior of that of what transpired following Katrina – I have no doubt about that whatsoever. Yet, here we are, listening to ‘pubs labeling the entire effort as substandard – as if there is some precedent for this accident, some standard for attending to what has happened, here. Notice how you never hear new ideas or actions being proposed or taken by the ‘pubs, you only hear the need for “more” and “faster” – the easiest low-hanging press-ready fruit to pick on.
How much more can a government administration do in this instance than what has been done so far and what continues to happen? The government is about policy, money, military assets and influential pressure. They are not about drilling rigs and oil clean-up and the know-how to correct every problem any company might have on a public scale. (Isn’t this very argument that was used by Republicans AGAINST the government rescue and management of GM?) And what do we see aimed at the gulf right now? There’s money, ships, scientists and “experts”, regulation, policing and natural resource research at every turn, not to mention an incredible amount of pressure being placed on BP to correct the situation – who technically didn’t even cause the accident at all, but is the only company with the resources to handle the aftermath and who, in fact, is responsible for the mess since the oil coming out of the well drilled by Transocean is owned by BP. The response was pretty much immediate and was heightened at every turn of the process in accordance with new findings and new information that the government’s own resources were uncovering.
This is the kind of junk that often makes people just tune out politics and politicians and claim that the whole system is worthless. People don’t want to hear tit-for-tat, they want action and benefits. Actions will always speak louder than words, even if the media is super-penetrating and our eyes over-saturated with “news” and pundits railing about that which ails only their special interest. If a ‘pub really had a problem with the way things have unfolded they would simply ACT and raise Cain within the confines of the committees and cabinets that actually produce actions and benefits for the situation and for those being affected by this mess. So far we are seeing nothing … but we are hearing a lot.
Please, shut up and do your job as an elected official. We’ll all be better for it.
Posted on 23rd April 2010 by Ben Krasner in Day to Day Goodies | In The News | Politics - U.S. National
CNBC, Porn, SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission)
By: AP
Via: CNBC.com @ http://www.cnbc.com/id/36733087
Senior staffers at the Securities and Exchange Commission spent hours surfing pornographic websites on government-issued computers while they were being paid to police the financial system, an agency watchdog says.
The SEC’s inspector general conducted 33 probes of employees looking at explicit images in the past five years, according to a memo obtained by The Associated Press.
The memo says 31 of those probes occurred in the 2 1/2 years since the financial system teetered and nearly crashed.
The staffers’ behavior violated government-wide ethics rules, it says.
It was written by SEC Inspector General David Kotz in response to a request from Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.
The memo was first reported Thursday evening by ABC News. It summarizes past inspector general probes and reports some shocking findings:
- A senior attorney at the SEC’s Washington headquarters spent up to eight hours a day looking at and downloading pornography. When he ran out of hard drive space, he burned the files to CDs or DVDs, which he kept in boxes around his office. He agreed to resign, an earlier watchdog report said.
- An accountant was blocked more than 16,000 times in a month from visiting websites classified as “Sex” or “Pornography.” Yet he still managed to amass a collection of “very graphic” material on his hard drive by using Google images to bypass the SEC’s internal filter, according to an earlier report from the inspector general. The accountant refused to testify in his defense, and received a 14-day suspension.
- Seventeen of the employees were “at a senior level,” earning salaries of up to $222,418.
- The number of cases jumped from two in 2007 to 16 in 2008. The cracks in the financial system emerged in mid-2007 and spread into full-blown panic by the fall of 2008.
Read the rest of “SEC Staffers Watched Porn as System Crashed” @ CNBC.com
