For those who think that Independence Day is only celebrated by the “right wing” get off your high horses and wake the hell up.  The role of the Declaration of Independence in our country is rooted to the core.  If we didn’t have that, you’d be drinking tea, eating crumpets and saying, “’Ello, guv’na".  I personally hate British tea, it tastes like shit and it only belongs in Boston Harbor.  Crumpets are nothing to write home about, and as for the speech do I really need to explain that?

These ass hats don’t even know how to run a proper survey, twist statistics, and then say celebrating the birth of America is supposedly the bastion of “right wing quacks”.  This coming from a bunch of pricks who roll out on May 5th and celebrate Cinco de Mayo, yet they abhor American Independence.  They are nothing but a bunch of shit-hooks who belittle those who understand American culture and ideals.

Who the hell do these people think they are?  They are slandering one of the greatest achievements of one of their own alumni by playing the partisan game.  For what?  American Independence has absolutely nothing to do with partisan politics.  Those who attempt to taint it as such do nothing by expose their anti-American sentiments.

Then again some may dismiss my statements because of the following facts about me:

Hearing about all the suckers who believed that the rapture was yesterday was already depressing enough.  Then the heavy boot’s story spread closer than I would have liked.

I can some what understand how it could happen given unused knowledge and skills are lost.  How in the name of Zeus's butthole is the concept of gravity so lost?  If gravity can pull heavy boots to the surface, why wouldn’t it pull down a freaking pen.  Hell Apollo 15 dropped a hammer and a feather to prove Galileo right.  The feather didn’t float off into space.  Those thoughts cause the minor depression, then I remember that these people also vote and I break out the whiskey.

At least the wife is about to finish “Unintended Consequences”, I guess that’s a glimmer of hope.  She also said the pen would fall to the surface.  Then again I am obsessed with the Apollo program.  While the cost was hugely immense, I cannot help but step back in awe as engineer and look at what all those young men did.  There is no limit to the possibility of human achievement other than the limits created by bureaucratic red tape.

H/T Ry Jones

Recently there have been a couple posts regarding higher education and student loans on a blog I frequent.  The wife and I having both recently graduated from a four year university thought we would provide some extra input about our observations.

I graduated from Washington State University with a BS in Electrical Engineering.  Starting salary  for a BS averages about $60K, MS $71K, and a Ph.D. $88k nationally.  The 5 years it took me to earn my degree cost approximately $90K total.  I could have taken a job as a CCNA immediately out of high school and made about $30K per year.  So, for 5 years in school, I spent approximately $90,000 and also lost an additional $30,000 plus raises for gained experience, figure at the end it would have been about $34,500.  So combining the opportunity cost, and the actual cost of my degree I’m in the hole approximately $250,000 dollars for my engineering degree.  Though I also am a little bit further off than most since I also had my CCNA, we could use a lower salary in the $18,000 range and it still comes in  at $185,000.  Using the average BSEE salary,  it would take me 14 years before I broke even with my earning power as a CCNA because of the debt.  This approximation does not take into account full promotions, it just assumes an annual 3.5% pay increase per year.