It seems every device I’m looking at buying for my Home Theater supports some type of conversion of the video signal to a different resolution.  In my view, I want to limit the number of resolution conversions going on in the system yet still provide for a simple wiring scheme to get everything connected.  I’ll look at three different scenarios and discuss the benefits and issues of each with the goal of only one video conversion point per scenario…

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Well, I did a quick check of the Mitsubishi website and found they had recently released a new series of TV’s, one of which is the 57833.  This is their new Diamond series DLP model that supports 1080p, well, kind of….it uses the 960 x 1080 DLP chip, so it does “wobulation” to get the full 1920 x 1080 pixels.  I also found a pretty good review of the previous version TV here.

So, I decided to go take a look at this baby at one of the higher end stores that specializes in Home Theater stuff.  I really wanted to see how well this set performed.  Let me just say, the sales guy needs to go back to sales training….

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As a follow-up to and earlier post about one of the hosts of The View not knowing if the Earth was flat or round, I thought I would post some links to a few sites that have very good descriptions of how the Earth fits into the Universe.

This site describes the size of the Universe:
The Scale of the Universe

This site shows the size of the Earth relative to other objects in the Universe:
The Size of Our World

Kind of puts things in perspective…and if that isn’t enough, Carl Sagan wrote something called The Pale Blue Dot to describe the view of the Earth from the Voyager 1 spacecraft as it sped toward the edge of the solar system, which in cosmic terms, is only a baby step away.

Now that the wall is done, it’s time to begin the difficult journey to TV heaven/nirvana, but along the way I’ll have to encounter many demons who want to confuse and confound me.

First along the path are the manufacturers web sites, filled with all kinds of marketing speak meant to obscure any potential weaknesses in their product while touting new and unusual terms for the “special” technologies used in their magnificent machines.

Next, there is loads of mis-information that can be found on the internet in the on-line forums and reviews.  These too can confuse the searcher and one must be careful of the origin of these on-line data nuggets.

And finally, there are the TV salesmen…these crafty devils will appear to listen to your needs, but in the end they will try to sell you the TV they want to sell, not the TV that is best for you and they will try to sell it at a price that will make them happy.

This is not going to be easy….

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Well, it took a bit longer than expected but the wall is now complete!!  So as promised, I’ve posted some pictures of the finished product.

The boring stuff first…

Here is the inside with the doors shut

And here is the inside with the doors open

Click the link to see the rest of the pictures….

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Maybe she was already a member of the Flat Earth Society, but in the clip below, one of the hosts on the TV show The View actually states that she does not know if the Earth is flat or round.  This statement comes out apparently right after she states she does not believe in Evolution.

UPDATE: Youtube keeps taking the clips I find down, so I’m going to stop looking for new ones.  If this one doesn’t work…sorry.

I can’t help but go off about this….

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Americans United for the Separation of Church and State has sued the Round Rock Texas school district on behalf of some parents and a student for promoting prayer at the graduation ceremonies of their 4 high schools.

You can read their article about it here.

Basically, what was happening is that the school district would sponsor a vote of the student body at each of its 4 high schools to decide if a prayer should be read at the graduation ceremonies, when one of the schools voted no, the district asked that school to vote again.

You can read the letter sent to parents from the principal about the re-vote here.

This is wrong on many levels, first that the school district would sanction this type of thing, second that they think a vote should decide a religious issue and finally that they apparently had a desired result in mind.

I had posted earlier about HB 3678, entitled “Relating to voluntary student expression of religious viewpoints in public schools”. As you recall, I was concerned that this bill opened up the door to prayer in the Texas schools.  Well, it does that, but it also allows for students to answer questions citing their religious beliefs regardless of whether those answers are correct in regard to the curriculum.  For example, this means a student could answer a question about the age of the world as 6000 years citing their religious views and the teacher would have to give them credit.  I could go on, but the organization Texas Citizens for Science has summed this up much better.  I would recommend you read their letter sent to the Texas legislature and if this doesn’t make you nervous, I’m not sure what will.