Huffman Coding

A friend of mine went to church this morning and was told it was a sin to vote the way he was planning on voting.

Claiming the support a single person is a sin in the name of the Bible seems blasphemous to me. We should be able to look at religious institutions as paragons of morality, not petty partisan name callers. Witchhunts should have ended centuries ago. I’m not sure wearing your religion on your sleeve is the best way to be a politician even if one were a Christian.

I think the Sojourners have it right on this one: God is Not a Republican. Or a Democrat. That site has Christian-inspired viewpoints that have been overlooked this political season.

In addition to being divisive within the congregation, the priest did something that violates his church’s tax-exempt status.

On page 8 of this IRS publication gives a handful of examples of what is against the law. My friend’s morning experience corresponds to the illegal activity in the fourth hypothetical example. And this is going on all over this U.S. this weekend.

I would encourage anyont to visit here for what they can do about it if your clegy starts advocating a particular candidate from the pulpit.

My wife is a crafty woman. Last month she ahold of a “Martha Stewart Kids” magazine and decided to subscribe to it. The tagline of the magazine is “Fun Stuff to Do Together.” When the first issue came to the house, the magazine was still the same elegantly laid out periodical with crafty ideas, but they had quietly removed its namesake from the cover and binding.

I suppose that beats changing the direction of the rag and writing articles on phone etiquette when the guard is listening or how to put a pen knife in an Easy Bake oven cupcake.

My 5 year old DVD player died. Back then, DVD players were expensive. They were heavy and large and had lots of buttons. My recently deceased player had 15 connectors for cables and 18 buttons on the front. It was nice. You could operate it completely without a remote control because it had that scroll wheel on the unit.

The basement DVD player, purchased a few months ago, has been moved up to the living room. It has only seven really tiny non-ergonomic buttons in front and only 8 A/V connectors in back.

I went to Best Buy to gander at possible replacement DVD players. They are much less expensive now. According to reports the average manufacturing profit for them, now made in China, is down to one dollar. They are shorter, narrower, lighter and shallower. They look and feel cheaper. You can no longer buy a player with a scroll wheel on the front at ANY price. None of them impressed me. You can buy a changer that holds 5 DVDs, but I just can’t see myself watching 10 hours of movies without getting up for a bladder break.

Almost all play MP3 and picture CDs now. There was one DVD player that had flash memory slots on it so you could view digital camera pictures on your TV, but most of my pictures on my computer’s hard drive.

One of the neatest DVD players out there also connects to your computer so you enjoy movie, picture and music files from your computer on the family room TV/stereo. No slide projector! This coolness comes at a cost though. Turns out it is cheaper to buy a plain old DVD player plus a separate media adapter that does the other stuff.

But why stop there? If you are going to buy something the can handle computer music and pictures, for a few bucks more your can browse the web and chat on your TV too. The optional keyboard becomes necessary though if you want to surf or chat.

As it stands now, I only have two inputs to my TV and both of them are taken (a VCR and the cheapo DVD player). So I cannot use one of these new toys in my family room. Perhaps if the box had its own display I wouldn’t have to connect it to the TV. And maybe the display should have a higher resolution than my analog TV. And hard drive for storing stuff. And the ability to take it from room to room. And, and, and…

It appears I am rationalizing a laptop purchase.

So instead of buying a $80 DVD player, really should get a $1800 laptop for Christmas. Think that reasoning with fly with the spouse? Not a chance.

While I was watching TV, my two-year-old Claire brought two apples to me. One for her and one for me. A lady of few words, she handed me hers and said “Open!”

I replied with “would you like me to cut it for you.” “No,” she insisted.

I repeated my offer. “No… Open!” She pointed to the stem.

For giggles, I pulled off the stem.

She grabbed the apple back: “Dank yoo!”

She then contentedly sat on the sofa and took a big bite of the opened apple.

Chris found a blurb in the paper for an open house by an Alpaca farm. As far as I can tell they are cross breed of camel and Lhasa Apso, but we thought they would have fun visiting Saturday. The open house was really for potential breeders (Alpacas: the Amway of Animals), but it was also open to the public.

One of the animals at the farm had given birth that morning and another had given birth the day before. They pet Snowstorm and Murray and we were invited in to their house. Conveniently, they had a little store with alpachandise for sale. Next to the beautiful (and expensive) sweaters and scarves there were minature Alpacas and teddy bears made from real wool. When I pointed out to her that, unlike her numerous beanie babies, the bear in Katie’s arms was made from real fur, she went ashen. She asked “Where did the bear inside go?”

(After an awkward explanation, we bought two tiny Alpacas for show and tell on Tuesday and went home.)