Smotherman Family

Real Genius Politics | Thursday May 28, 2009 | By Kent

Oil was over $80 a barrel not that long ago, and OPEC would love to see it there again. As the OPEC leadership is fond of saying, when it comes to oil the demand sets the price. And as much as we hate to admit it, they are right. This is the real truth behind...

Real Genius General | Monday April 13, 2009 | By Kent

The late Paul Harvey could well have termed this The rest of the story.... You are being lied to about pirates

Real Genius Website coding & stuff | Sunday March 08, 2009 | By Kent

I've recently launched the Family Advocacy Movement  (F.A.M) website developed using Drupal. Drupal totally rocks, and I've learned enough PHP along the way to implement some Drupal modules for the site. The first module I wrote was actually for my ...

Real Genius General | Monday February 09, 2009 | By Kent

We finally broke in our new Pirates of the Caribbean Scrabble game! And no, we don't play with the screwy optional rules that came with this game. 4 bonus points for spelling Elizabeth? You've got to be kidding me! Melanie 363, Kent 346. The crazy...

Real Genius Website coding & stuff | Monday February 09, 2009 | By Kent

I've been taking a good look at Drupal lately. I have some new website projects I was getting ready to start coding, and thought maybe I should look at something like a CMS (content management system) instead. Of course I looked at java ones first, but quite...

Real Genius Politics | Friday January 30, 2009 | By Kent

I love it when I come across hard facts like this on how much wealthy people pay in taxes. It shows just one aspect of the true legacy of republicans like Bush - they talk about tax cuts but those cuts never reach very far down the ladder. The richest 400...

Real Genius Chess | Friday January 30, 2009 | By Kent

I've been following the Corus chess tournament and one fellow observer at chessgames.com noticed the following statistic:   Jan-30-09    al wazir : More than two thirds of the games in Group C so far have ended...

Real Genius Politics | Thursday January 29, 2009 | By Kent

It was likely unavoidable - Illinois governor Blago was just impeached. However the funniest, saddest thing I've read about it was this: "State government has come to a standstill because of lack of trust in this administration," Sen. Bradley...

Real Genius General | Wednesday January 28, 2009 | By Kent

Here is a little ditty in follow-up to some changes at work for 2009 : All [redacted] US Employees: The purpose of this email is to clarify information regarding the (2) Unpaid Days Off that [redacted] spoke of in his presentation, on Jan 8 th...

Real Genius Chess | Wednesday January 28, 2009 | By Kent

As I tell all my chess kids, chess games are almost always lost, not won. Of course the winner has to see how the game was lost by the other player, but the point is that "The winner of the game is the player who makes the next-to-last mistake. -...

Real Genius Politics | Wednesday January 28, 2009 | By Kent

The US education system might get a big helping hand from Uncle Sam to the tune of $150 billion as part of Obama's stimulus package. Of course republicans are outraged at this sort of frivolous spending (From the article linked above): "But...

Real Genius Politics | Wednesday January 28, 2009 | By Kent

UPDATE: I never thought I'd see the day when a career politician actually admits the way government works : Blagojevich told the state Senate the tapes captured something that "all of us in politics do in order to run campaigns and win...

Real Genius Politics | Monday January 26, 2009 | By Kent

I read earlier today about Citibank's new $50 million dollar luxury, executive jet . In light of their recent $45 billion dollar bailout this is particularly outlandish. But then I realized that big companies - just like our government - lose touch with...

Real Genius General | Sunday January 18, 2009 | By Kent

Melanie and I started playing Scrabble again, and decided to keep a running score total, and screenshots of the final boards. Yes. we are that nerdy. We didn't decide to do the latter until the second game, so the first is lost forever, but the second game is...

Real Genius General | Sunday January 18, 2009 | By Kent

Game 3: Kent 319, Melanie 319 Technorati Tags: Scrabble

Real Genius General | Wednesday January 14, 2009 | By Kent

The company I work for just updated some "policies": [redacted] has decided to eliminate the (2) [paid] personal days that we previously provided. [redacted] has decided to schedule (2) Unpaid Days Off during 2009, May 22, 2009 and...

Real Genius Politics | Wednesday January 14, 2009 | By Kent

Obama is already threatening his first veto - against a proposed resolution to block the disbursement of the next $350 billion for the corporate bailout from his own party . This is why the right wing has been so effective - they know how to stay on...

Real Genius Chess | Tuesday January 13, 2009 | By Kent

I follow chess daily, and try to play at least every week these days - which is up from my traditional never. I love Mig Greengard's Daily Dirt chess blog, which recently commented on the ongoing row between some top players over FIDE not treating all top...

Real Genius Politics | Thursday November 13, 2008 | By Kent

A brief poem from the Women of the Weather Underground, circa 1974: They call it terror if you are few and have no B-52s if you are not a head of state with an army and police if you have neither napalm nor tanks nor electronic...

Real Genius Politics | Thursday November 13, 2008 | By Kent

I was researching the Weathermen and learned that Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn helped found Prairie Fire after splitting formally from the Weathermen in the late 1970s. If anyone has a copy of the 1974 book (or complete text of) "Prairie...

Real Genius Politics | Friday October 31, 2008 | By Kent

Not shockingly, the US has launched more missiles from drone planes in Pakistan. Pakistan says the strikes violate its sovereignty. They are right, it does. But the US knows it's the biggest, baddest bully on the block and does what it wants. We're right,...

Real Genius Politics | Monday October 27, 2008 | By Kent

This last Friday was the last day to register to vote in Nebraska, and Melanie and I waited in line with Nick so he could register. All of Douglas county only had one registration office open for this last day, and the line was long. We waited in line for...

Real Genius Politics | Tuesday October 21, 2008 | By Kent

Cuba just reported finding 20 billion barrels of oil in their waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Somewhere in the shadowed halls of the US government there are talks going on of our options - invasion or extreme-slant drilling....

Real Genius General | Monday October 13, 2008 | By Kent

While at World of Fun with Rissy, I witnessed a couple of things that were pretty disturbing. When we were in line for Fury of the Nile, a bit behind us in line were a group of guys that looked to be about 30. One had his son with him, who was about 5 or 6....