Ben’s Blog

Last night Ole Miss won its first football game of the season 41-24 over Memphis. We were supposed to win the game, but given the last few seasons we’ve had, it’s always good to get that first one out of the way. It was also coach Houston Nutt’s first game as a Rebel.

Looking at our schedule, we should beat Samford, Vanderbilt, and Louisiana-Monroe. Vandy isn’t the gimme they used to be, but we should still win. I give us 50/50 odds against Wake Forest (next weekend), South Carolina, Arkansas, and Mississippi State. That gives us anywhere between four and eight wins. Most Ole Miss fans would be thrilled with six wins and a bowl game.

Mississippi State got beat by Louisiana Tech 22-14 yesterday. I was amused. A lot of Ole Miss and State fans claim that they always pull for the other team when they aren’t playing their team. I’m not one of them, and I think most of them are lying.

I was disheartened to see Alabama beat Clemson yesterday. I’ve always had a distaste for Alabama. I think it runs in my family. I had enjoyed the last couple of years without having to put up with their fans. Oh well.

Over the past week or so both Presidential candidates have chosen their running mate. I think both made good choices for their particular situation.

Obama needed someone with experience, particularly in foreign policy. Joe Biden gives him that, and he seems to play well with the crowds too.

McCain chose Sarah Palin, the virtually unknown governor of Alaska. She’s a good choice in my opinion, though riskier than Biden. I think McCain had to take a risk though. Some say that if McCain wanted a woman he should have chosen Kay Bailey Hutchison. Palin is relatively inexperienced, though she is a conservative “maverick,” which fits with McCain’s campaign. A lot of the pundits don’t like the pick, but so far the public at large seems to be positive about the pick. Her stance on the issues and her reputation as a reformer more than makes up for her lack of experience in my opinion.

In addition to her inexperience, she is risky is because of an investigation into her firing of Alaska’s Public Safety Commissioner. She allegedly fired him because he wouldn’t fire her ex-brother-in-law. The investigation is supposed to wrap up in October, a month before the election. Presumably McCain believes her side of the story.

I’ll be voting for McCain in November. That will come as no surprise to those that know where I stand on some issues. McCain is certainly not perfect, but I can’t even consider Obama given some of his views. In the next couple of weeks I’ll explain in some detail why I’m voting for McCain.

Last week TVA announced that they were raising their wholesale power rate by 20% due to the increasing cost of fuel. Both of the power companies here in Lafayette County get their power from TVA, so they’ll be passing that right on to us.

While that is mostly bad news, the good news is that every increase in the price of electricity makes solar power that much more viable. So, between the price of its “competition” going up and technology bringing the dollar/watt ratio down, solar will be viable before we know it.

And that’s a good thing, because solar is cool. With solar, you aren’t paying a monthly bill to a utility company, you’re paying off a capital expense that increases the value of your home or business. And regardless of your position on global warming, I think we can all agree that the less junk in the atmosphere, the better.

Unfortunately I don’t have any hard numbers to crunch on this, but all signs point to solar power becoming viable in the relatively near future.

Incidentally, TVA is an interesting experiment in American socialism. Take a moment to read up on it if you’re not familiar.

We all made it home from the hospital before noon yesterday. Everyone is still doing great. In fact, Cassie is at Wal-Mart as I type. Liam is laying on the bed behind me, snoozing away.

I took 374 pictures while at the hospital. I managed to weed those down to 64 good, mostly non-redundant ones, and I’ve posted them on my Zenfolio page. There is definitely still some redundancy, but keep in mind that my primary audience here is grandmothers, and they don’t seem to mind.

Before I go any further, we really appreciate everyone who visited, called, emailed, or commented on the blog post. It’s great to count all of you as friends, even if we don’t get to see some of you very often.

As you can see in the pictures, Liam has a respectable head of dark hair. I was blond when I was born, so that most likely comes from Cassie. He also has Cassie’s distinctive “chin dimple” as well as her cheek dimples when he is sitting just right. He also has very long fingers and toes. He’s a little lighter (4 oz.) and a little shorter (3/4″) than Luke was, but Luke was 2 days late and Liam was 8 days early, so we’ll give him some time to catch up. (more…)

I had hoped to make it home for an hour or two today to post a full update and maybe a few pictures, but I hate to leave Cassie and Liam at the hospital for too long. Therefore I am stuck posting on my iPhone again. I long for broadband and a full-size keyboard.

Both Cassie and Liam will get discharged around noon tomorrow, so hopefully I can post a more complete update and some pictures tomorrow night.

Liam’s pediatrician has been around several times and says he is doing great. You couldn’t tell it from the picture I posted, but he has a good bit of dark hair. Most peple agree Luke looks a lot like me, but Liam definitely has several of his mom’s characteristics.

Cassie is doing great too. They took her off her morphine drip this morning, but she’s still getting around well and isn’t in too much pain. I know she’s doing better than I expected at this point.

Luke is doing well in his role as a big brother. He likes to give Liam kisses, has held him a couple of times, and even helped feed him this afternoon. Yes, I have pictures. He’s liked the hospital in general too. He’s very social, and there’s lots of people to play with and say hi to.

More later.

Liam Nicholas Pharr was born at 10:24am this morning at Baptist Memorial Hospital-North Mississippi in Oxford. He weighed 7 lbs. 2oz. and was 19.75 inches long. Both he and his mom are doing well. More later.

I have added a new page that allows you to sign up to receive an email each time I post a new blog entry. It also mentions RSS and Google Reader, my RSS reader of choice.

For those of you using WordPress for your blog, I’m using the Subscribe2 plugin for the email functionality. It was nice and easy to setup.

We have to be at the hospital in less than seven hours. Yes, I should be in bed.

Cassie’s mom is here to take care of Luke in the morning. He usually gets up around 7:30, so there’s a good chance he’ll wake up a big brother. He knows something is up, but of course he doesn’t fully understand the situation. It’ll be interesting to see how he handles it.

Since Cassie’s having a C-section she’ll be in the hospital until around noon on Friday. My parents and grandmothers are coming to be here for the birth tomorrow, and my mom is going to stick around and take care of Luke for the rest of the week. Cassie’s mom will be back next week. We’ll need a lot of help because Cassie won’t be able to pick Luke up for at least two weeks, and he can be a handful on his own.

This time feels quite a bit different from when we had Luke. It’s a little surreal. It hasn’t sunk in that I’ll have another son tomorrow. It’s going to be an interesting transition for everyone involved.

Unfortunately there is no public wifi at the hospital, but I’ll make a quick post on my iPhone after Liam is born and everything has settled down.

The short war between Russia and Georgia is technically over, but things are far from settled. Both presidents have signed a truce that essentially puts things back to the way they were before the war. However, the Russians say they are staying where they are, deep inside Georgia, until an international force arrives to monitor the ceasefire. Until Russia leaves Georgian territory, anything could happen. There have also been rumors that Russian troops are not allowing some aid into Georgia. The group Human Rights Watch has alleged that Russia was using cluster bombs against Georgian civilians. According to them, cluster bombs have been banned by 107 countries.

While Russia is seen as the villian here in the West, Georgia is not at all blameless. South Ossetia won de facto independence from Georgia after a civil war in the early nineties. However, it is still considered to be part of Georgia by virtually everyone. This whole thing started when Georgia tried to regain South Ossetia about a week and a half ago. If you ask South Ossetians, Georgia is the villian and Russia is the protector. Of course, the whole thing had been brewing for years.

Ties between Russia and the US had already been strained by this whole situation. However, on Thursday, Poland signed a deal with the US to host part of the US missile defense system. This did not sit well with the Russians. They say it “cannot go unpunished” and have threatened military action against Poland. Poland is part of NATO, so if Russia followed through with their threats, things could get interesting quickly.

Sunday on the way home from Belmont we stopped in Pontotoc for some cheap gas ($3.40 to be exact). There was a sticker on the pump that said “Enriched with Ethanol.” Someone had taken the liberty to cross out “Enriched” and had replaced it with “Diluted.” While I deplore vandalism, I was a little amused that someone felt so strongly about the situation.

I had previously heard claims (on the local talk radio station) that gasoline with ethanol added gave you worse gas mileage than straight gasoline. I had never given it much thought, but the vandalism made me curious.

The most definitive numbers I could find were in a report from the American Petroleum Institute (page 9). The API is a trade association for the US oil industry, so, if anything, you would expect their numbers to err on the negative side. The report cites a small study using 2001-2003 model year cars and light trucks that shows a 1.4% fuel economy penalty when using fuel with 10% ethanol, the most common mixture. They cite another study using older cars (1989 models) that shows a 2.6% fuel economy penalty.

Let’s use the number for more recent cars: 1.4%. That means if your car gets 25 mpg with regular gasoline, it’ll get 24.65 mpg with 10% ethanol. That doesn’t sound like a big difference, but if regular gasoline is being sold for $3.59 a gallon then gasoline with 10% ethanol would have to be $3.54 or cheaper to make up for the decrease in fuel efficiency. So, keep this in mind and buy your gas accordingly.

Of course, if the US taxpayer wasn’t subsidizing the production of ethanol then this wouldn’t be an issue, but I digress. That is, perhaps, a blog post for another day.