John W. McCain

March 4, 2008

Today is National Grammar Day.

In celebration of this fact, the following blog post will contain no grammatical errors. Factual errors or quality of prose will remain at its present level. Thank you.

Now listening, “Hysteria”, Def Leppard

This video, if I recall correctly, had shots of people waltzing. That’s what I think of when I listen to it again. I guess, as Lewis Black advised, I should kill myself.

“Love Bites”

This was the real slow ballad on the album. There’s a desperation to it, a yearning that brings me right back to that era. Loving someone so much you almost don’t want to touch them for fear you’ll break them.

Ah, Lisa.


McCain has won-no surprise there. Obama and Hillary are still tied.

When 102 million is not 102 million

http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slug=rotowire-enoethlisbergerontra&prov=rotowire&type=fantasy


Football contracts annoy me. Roethlisberger just signed a big extension with the Steelers-a great move on their part. But it's reported as a "8 year 102 million deal" when it isn't. Only $36 million is guaranteed. They could cut him tomorrow and only owe the $36 million. They won't, of course.

But it ain't $102 million either.

What is old is new again

March 3, 2008

Tomorrow, March 4, is National Grammar Day. Huzzah.

Heartrending story on 60 minutes about R.A.M, an organization founded to airlift health care providers into third world countries. They covered a clinic, where the doctors and nurses worked all day and into the night, finally turning 400 sick people away at the end.
In Knoxville, Tennessee.
Knoxville Fucking Tennessee.
I hate this country.

It’s Alexander Graham Bell’s birthday.

Found a couple of great new podcasts when searching for an account of a Homebrew Computer Club podcast-Boring Beige Box and Retrobits. They’re a couple of years old, though-I’ll have to write the author and see what happened. I remember well the things the guy from Boring Beige Box is talking about-configuring DOS so that your game will run, that kind of thing. Running an old IBM PC off of diskettes-and before that, loading games off of CASSETTE TAPE into an APPLE II! Not a IIc or a IIe, a II.




Just watched the end of the Terminator season finale. I'll have to go back and watch the whole thing on Fox.com, but the end of it was spectacular, set to the tune of Johnny Cash's "The Man Comes Around". Maybe I'm just a simpleton, but I think it's excellent television.

Plus The Riches is coming back soon. That's good news.

Pride of the Yankees?

Can somebody explain to me why people seem to be all hot and bothered about the Yankees' chances this year? Yeah, they'll hit, and pitch a little -but they can't CATCH the ball worth a damn.

Charlie Pierce on Barack Obama

"He needs to give a speech in which he explains this all to a willfully amnesiac country that has grown illiterate of its Constitution, ignorant of its founding principles, and taught by three decades of conservative government and idiot popular culture that its fundamental rights are at best inconveniences and, at worst, loopholes through which criminals escape justice and terrorists infiltrate the country. They are not "their" rights. They are our rights, damn it. He has spoken gloriously about the promise of the country. He's got to bring that arsenal to bear on why the country was worth that rhetoric in the first place, to tell the country that there are some things that America cannot do and remain the same country. He has to tell the country what those things are, why we can't do them, and the inevitable consequences of doing them, not in the rest of the world, which presumes the paramount importance of projecting American power around the world, but here at home, in the existential threat of those measures to the idea of the country itself. We oppose these things because of who we are. If we do not, we are complicit. He needs to tell the country that."

TTBOOK

March 2, 2008

It’s my brother’s birthday. He’s 28. “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.”

I should clarify that Ben Stein’s otherwise marvelous talk yesterday was spoiled by creationism. It turns out he is narrating a documentary that purports to “explore” the creationism “question” by raising the same old stupid questions, concluding “it’s all a mystery”, and thus leaving an avenue for ignorance to flourish. He’s better and smarter than that.

Heard another marvelous podcast from PRI’s “To The Best of Our Knowledge” about consciousness, featuring Marvin Minsky and Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris and other bright folks, and I believe the Radio Lab first show of the new season is on my IPod also. Plenty of brainpower.

I have gone pretty directly from scoffing at the need for an IPod, to being pretty much unable to function without one.

Funny how I’ve gone from, “Gee, isn’t it neat how I can get x on my IPod” to being genuinely annoyed when I CAN’T get something on there.
I had a hankering for Def Leppard Friday night-I used to have Pyromania, Hysteria, and one or two of their other records on tape, and then, of course, on CD. I’m pretty sure I sold them off-anyway, they are no longer in my collection. So I go on ITunes…and they’re not there. I had to go to Barnes and Noble and actually BUY a CD. Can you imagine?

According to the author of “The Female Brain”, men use, on average, 7000 words per day, and women use more than 20000. That is easily true in my case, but I wonder how many words go through my head during the course of a day.
The author of that book also points out the problem companies have in adjusting to women’s dropping out of the work force to care for children. I would argue to remove the gender in that statement, but the companies that succeed in the future, I would argue, are going to recognize a holistic version of employees, and give them enough time off to be whole human beings instead of slaves to the grind.

I plan to be a little more Red Sox centric this year-posting a take on each regular season and postseason game. I haven’t been following the spring training games very carefully, because events in the spring are trapped in the “spring training paradox”: if you hit .450, it’s “only spring training”. If you hit .150, you’re struggling.

I ought to check on XM to see when the next game is on. I think there are some announcing changes this year, radio wise, so it will be interesting to hear who they’ve got.

I haven’t listened to a thing on XM since the end of baseball season.

Progress

March 1, 2008

1)How bad is morale at my company when I’m one of the happy ones? Or am I just a better liar?


Ben Stein, in a speech on NPR’s Word for Word, makes an excellent point that Kurt Vonnegut used to make-50 or 60 years ago, it was routine to have segregated facilities across much of America. As much as anything, that shows we have progressed in some small way. It was an outstanding speech as well.



Ah, Canan.

Liar, liar

"Now, let me talk about the phone companies. You cannot expect phone companies to participate if they feel like they're going to be sued. I mean, it is — these people are responsible for shareholders. They're private companies.

The government said to those who have alleged to have helped us that it is in our national interests and it's legal. It's in our national interest because we want to know who's calling who from overseas into America. We need to know in order to protect the people.

It was legal. And now all of a sudden plaintiffs attorneys, class-action plaintiffs attorneys, you know — I don't want to try to get inside their head; I suspect they see, you know, a financial gravy train — are trying to sue these companies. It's unfair. It is patently unfair.

And, secondly, these lawsuits create doubts amongst those who will — whose help we need."

-George W. Bush

Uh..........no.

Phone companies HAVE to participate if they are given a court order, no matter how they feel about it.

And it was NOT FUCKING LEGAL. Never, ever, ever.

This presidency is a disaster.

Gobsmacked

I heard the most amazing thing on the radio Thursday morning.

Listening to a standard NPR report about the Texas presidential primary, a woman was interviewed from a Texas megachurch. Not being born yesterday, I was not shocked that the woman was conservative, but the thing that shocked me was her reason why:

“...as a woman I have great respect for men and for their leadership and the submission of women to men which would come from my foundational beliefs of growing up in the church and a Christian home and that I think a man should lead our country.”

(http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=86994288)

Wow.

I had a few thoughts about this.

1) Wow.

2) I don't think I know a single person, and furthermore, I don't think I have ever met a single person who actually feels that way. I probably have. I have just never heard someone admit it.

3) There is some misogyny in the Bible, to be sure-I'm sure she can find support for her view in there. Fundamentalists always accuse others of picking and choosing from the Bible, though-I sure hope she follows her Bible to the letter, especially the part about not coming in the house when she is menstruating and stuff like that.

4) You have respect for the leadership of men? Really? Well, with the bang up job we've done running the place, it's no wonder.

Wow.

Sanctity of Marriage

http://television.aol.com/news/story/_a/anderson-wants-brief-nuptials-annuled/20080227065109990001

Clueless

Great TWIT this week (http://twit.tv/twit) with singer Jonathan Coulton, talking about the new media and marketing to niches.

Made me think about the media and media figures that I adore-Kevin Smith, Dan Carlin, Baseball Prospectus, TPN's Napoleon 101-and how the one thing that knits them together is their respect for me AS A CUSTOMER. They don't treat me like a commodity, and they don't demand my money at every turn, and when I email them or contact them, they actually get back to me.

This is the wave of the future, and if I had more energy, I would talk about it at length.

But that's the gist of it. Win customers by treating them like friends. Is that so freakin' hard?

Joke of the day

The Declaration of Independence was adopted July 4, 1776.

You would think they would have taken the holiday off.

Best Picture I Never Saw

I was stunned by the number of "Best Picture" winners I have never seen, at least not seen all the way through.

I've seen "My Fair Lady", "The Sting", "Cuckoo's Nest", "Rocky", "Ordinary People", "Platoon", "Rain Man", "Silence of the Lambs", "Unforgiven", "Forrest Gump", "American Beauty", "Gladiator", "A Beautiful Mind", and "Chicago". 14 out of 80.

How many have you seen?

McCain to blame the rain?

I feel duty bound to comment on the NYT-McCain story, if only to figure out just what the hell I think about it.

First of all, it is rather rank to hint about an affair without some evidence to back it up. They didn't say he was having an affair, only that some people on the campaign were concerned that he might be. That's hard to prove, and hard to deny.

But primarily, the thrust of the piece is that Mr. Straight Talk Express, Mr. Muck Out The Stables, Mr. Clean Up Washington, is buddy buddy with a lobbyist, and has pretty clearly done favors for that lobbyist. Now, the favors he did he may have done anyway-it may just be the right thing for him to do.

But it bears investigation.

Big Ups

http://www.oscar.com/nominees/?pn=detail&nominee=Ratatouille%20-%20Music%20Original%20Score%20Nominee

Big Ups to New Jersey's own Michael Giacchino, nominated for an Oscar for Best Score.