Posts from — August 2008

The amount of condescension the mainstream media has for bloggers is ridiculous and transparent: example.

Not sure why MSN video won’t let me embed it…

Every presidential candidate knows that the most important aspect of a potential running mate is how their names anagram. Here’s my analysis of the possibilities..

Obama/Biden
I think it was a good choice, as the anagram “Babe Domain” is a clear win. Who wouldn’t want to be in the babe domain? This ticket sends a clear message to voters and makes the McCain campaign’s babe deficit even more glaring.

Obama/Clinton
Despite being dubbed the “dream ticket”, an anagram of “Noncombat Ali” would have spelled electoral disaster (not literally). This anagram is a clear allusion to Muhammad Ali’s conscientious objection to the Vietnam War and would have played right into John McCain’s hands!

Obama/Edwards
I don’t think Edwards was on the short list, and it’s a good thing! Coming into November with an anagram “A Madras Bowed” is a terrible plan. After fighting rumors that Obama is a Muslim for so long, the last thing the campaign needs to do is suggest that he is bowing to some other authority while wearing a turban.

McCain/Romney
Clearly they hate each other, so watching them campaign would be really entertaining. With the anagram “My Cinema Corn” the country won’t be able to resist kicking back, grabbing some popcorn, and watching them bicker.

McCain/Lieberman
It’s going to be hard to get the Republicans to trust the vice presidency to someone outside of their big tent, and the anagram won’t help. “Canine Lamb Crime” is obviously a reference to the phrase “wolf in sheep’s clothing”, signaling that Lieberman is just working as a mole for the Democratic Party and has nefarious things planning for his tenure.

McCain/Huckabee
The best part of Mike Huckabee’s campaign was the endorsement by Chuck Norris, and the good news for McCain is that the endorsement would continue if Huckabee is chosen. The anagram “A Chuck Ambience” will bring Norris’ ass-kicking persona to the campaign to a degree unprecedented in modern American politics. Plus, that ambience will scare the crap out of terrorists.

(you can feel the ambience already!)

Here’s an idea I came up with yesterday. Out of generosity, I’m giving it away for free:

A Rick-Roll Field Drill

Start by playing some march, say Barnum and Bailey’s Favorites, then, at some transition, start playing Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up. The fans will love it!

From some searches on google and youtube, I don’t think this has been done before. I wasn’t able to find a band arrangement of the song, though, so that’d make things more difficult.

Good luck!

According to the McCain campaign, they have “underused” his POW story.

Really?

They keep “playing the POW card” for random things, such as why he has so many houses, attacking Elizabeth Edwards about healthcare and the reason he couldn’t have cheated at Saddleback. I also saw a reference to being a POW as a justification for cheating on his first wife, but I’m not 100% sure that came from the campaign itself, so that’s different.

NounVerbPOW.com is already taken.

If you have a chance to see I.O.U.S.A., I recommend it. This is the best movie about fiscal responsibility I’ve seen. EVER.

I don’t know a ton about macroeconomics, but the film did a great job of making the key concepts really accessible and making it clear why they mattered. I knew they did, but now I have a better idea of why. The documentary isn’t liberal or conservative: it just advocates not spending more than you have, and is rightfully critical of both political parties.

I’m increasingly fearful about where this country will be in 20 years. This movie is a good call to action, but the remedies for the problems are going to be politically unpopular until a large number of voting Americans demand that our politicians do something about it.

Trailer:

I also liked this SNL skit which was included in the documentary:

A couple of recent additions to my blogroll:

• Michelle (a friend from Lehigh) started a food blog: Taste As You Go.
• Peyton (a friend from high school) started a writing and poetry blog: Street Savior Ware
• Brendan (another friend from high school) has a blog I just started reading about… well, lots of stuff, including music, the internet, productivity, etc: Do What You Love

A lot of interesting people I know don’t write online at all, which is a shame. Especially the ones I don’t see that often anymore.

If you vote in the US and care about technology, this video by Lawrence Lessig breaks down some of the more important fundamental policy issues between the two campaigns:

This is a big deal. Joke about Al Gore all you want, but he actually did have a significant role in the development of the Internet. We need more politicians to enable technology like that.

On Friday, I saw Radiohead in Golden Gate park. The event was filled with trials and tribulations, but the music was awesome, I heartily recommend seeing them live if you ever have the chance.

I won’t go through the play-by-play for the whole story, as it’s quite a bit to type out, but here are a few notes:
- Unfortunately, I missed the first song because of a ticketing problem. Worse, the first song was 15 Step, which was really looking forward to hearing live.
- The ended with Everything in its Right Place, but with a faster beat and a driving bass drum part. It was a really cool variation.
- They didn’t play Electioneering. More cowbell!

Radiohead’s probably my favorite band. According to last.fm, I’ve listened to almost twice as many Radiohead tracks as any other band in the last ~5 years. I also have more radiohead tracks (110) than tracks for any other band, so there’s a bit of bias in that number, but whatever.

During my family vacation this Summer, I had a chance to see the New England Sand Sculpting Festival in Revere, MA. The sculptures were really impressive, here are some pictures I took:

(Picasa Album)

If you’re interested in science, evolution or documentaries, you’ll like “The Genius of Charles Darwin”, a three-part documentary by Richard Dawkins. It covers the history, science, sociology and debate around Darwinism. One fascinating part, paraphrased: “If you were to hold your mothers hand, and she held her mother’s hand, and so on, all the way back to the common ancestor of all chimps and humans, the line would only stretch about 300 miles.”

I also got a good laugh watching Dawkins read his hate mail:

You can watch the full documentary here.