Author: swanksalot

Some additional reading September 2nd from 08:15 to 13:29:

• Just wondering Bob Casey = Joe Lieberman – "After 16 years of the media falsely reporting that then-Pennsylvania Governor Bob Casey was "denied" a speaking slot at the 1992 Democratic convention because of his views on abortion, will the media now make a big deal out of the fact that John McCain reportedly wanted to pick Joe Lieberman as his running mate, but backed down when GOP leaders made clear they would not tolerate such a pick because of Lieberman's views on abortion?"
• This is what vetting looks like – "The new GOP talking point, dutifully repeated in the last 24 hours by McCain's spokesman, by Bill Bennett, by Gary Bauer, by Bill O'Reilly, and pretty much by every Republican surrogate on TV (they're very good at handing out talking points) is that the blogs are mean. That's John McCain's only response to the revelation that he didn't vet his choice for vice president of the United States? That bloggers are mean? Wow. If John McCain can't handle words from DailyKos, how is he going to handle bombs from Al Qaeda? But putting that aside, what really irks the Republicans is that the blogs, and the corporate media, did the vetting of Sarah Palin that McCain failed, and refused, to do"
• Seattle Voters May Decide on Bag Tax – <em>Beginning with these 3,400 questions, Science Debate 2008 worked with the leading organizations listed to craft the top 14 questions the candidates should answer. These questions are broad enough to allow for wide variations in response, but they are specific enough to help guide the discussion toward many of the largest and most important unresolved challenges currently facing the United States. </em>

Some additional reading September 1st from 23:14 to 23:56:

• Sciencedebate 2008 – Beginning with these 3,400 questions, Science Debate 2008 worked with the leading organizations listed to craft the top 14 questions the candidates should answer. These questions are broad enough to allow for wide variations in response, but they are specific enough to help guide the discussion toward many of the largest and most important unresolved challenges currently facing the United States.
• Obama Answers Top 14 Science Questions « The Martian Chronicles – Sciencedebate2008.com has come up with a list of 14 science policy questions for the candidates to answer, and Obama just provided his answers. Here are my notes, highlighting key points in case you don’t have time to read the whole thing:;
• Democracy Now! Host and Producers Arrested at Republican Convention | The Trail | washingtonpost.com – ST. PAUL — Democracy Now! radio host Amy Goodman and two producers were arrested while covering demonstrations at the Republican convention in St. Paul, Minn. Goodman was released after being held for over three hours, but is still waiting to hear when Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar would be released.

  "I was down on the convention floor interviewing delegates when I heard that two of our producers had been arrested," said Goodman. "I ran down to Jackson and 7th Street, where the police had moved in."

  Goodman said that when she ran up to find out what was going on, she was also arrested.

  "They seriously manhandled me and handcuffed my hands behind my back. The top ID [at the convention] is to get on the floor and the Secret Service ripped that off me. I had my Democracy Now! ID too. I was clearly a reporter."

• Focused–The Sequel – Swampland – TIME – "Frank Luntz/AARP focus group of undecided voters–this one in Minneapolis and with some bad news for John McCain: they don't like the choice of Sarah Palin for vice president. Only one person said Palin made him more likely to vote for McCain; about half the 25-member group raised their hands when asked if Palin made them less likely to vote for McCain. They had a negative impression of Palin by a 2-1 margin"

A few interesting links for August 29th through August 31st:

• Baby news strikes a chord: Politics | adn.com – Sarah Palin is allegedly eight months pregnant in this picture. Either she is wearing a corset, or she is lying, and the baby really isn't hers but her daughter's.
• Yankees will drag you out of the stadium if you try to go to the bathroom during "God Bless America" – Another reason to hate the Yankees:
  "The Yankees are serious about their bizarre prohibition on going to the bathroom during the playing of "God Bless America" during the Seventh Inning Stretch: a man was dragged out of the stadium for daring to stand up and move around instead of singing a patriotic, religious song. I really like Tommy Smothers's formulation of the principle at work here: "America, where you're free to say anything you want, and you'd better not say what you're not supposed to!"

A few interesting links for August 28th through August 29th:

• Why Oh Why Can't We Have Better Pollsters? – Polls are ridiculous, ignore them if you can.
  "But Gallup doesn’t report its daily results, they report a multi-day rolling average. Abramowitz notes that if you report a ten day rolling average, you get a chart where nothing happens — Obama maintains a flat lead of 3-4 points. Again, a stable race. But if instead of doing either of those things you do what Gallup actually does and report a three day rolling average, you get these pleasant looking peaks and valleys in the race. The change over time here is large enough in magnitude (unlike on the ten day chart) but also slow enough in pace (unlike on the one day chart) to be plausibly interpreted as public opinion shifting in response to events. And since the human mind is designed to recognize patterns and construct narratives, and since it suits the interests of campaign journalists to write narratives, people interpret the peaks and valleys of the three day average as real shifts in public opinion."
• Dwindling In Unbelief: Whose face do you see on the moth? – "Isn't it great? Jesus has returned again — this time on the back of a moth in east Texas.

  But I'm not so sure that it really is Jesus. I mean, aren't those horns on the top of his head? And what about those long, goat-like ears and beard? It looks more like Jesus' little brother Satan to me."

  that's freaky. Looks more like a Rasta from Texas if you stare long enough

• Poynter Online – Open Letter from Roger Ebert to Jay Mariotti – "What an ugly way to leave the Sun-Times. It does not speak well for you. Your timing was exquisite. You signed a new contract, waited until days after the newspaper had paid for your trip to Beijing at great cost, and then resigned with only an e-mail. You saved your explanation for a local television station.

  As someone who was working here for 24 years before you arrived, I think you owed us more than that. You owed us decency. The fact that you saved your attack for TV only completes our portrait of you as a rat.
  Newspapers are not dead, Jay, although you predicted the death of the Sun-Times and the Tribune. Neither paper will die any time soon. Job- hunting tip: It is imprudent to go on TV and predict the collapse of a newspaper you might hope would hire you. "

• "Crossroads" – "A blues gem from the master, Robert Johnson. It worked wonders for Cream, better than for Johnson, and, truth be told, Clapton's hard rock cover has always appealed to me. But it doesn't even begin to approach the complexity of Robert Johnson's original, which mixes at least 3 time signatures: 3/4, 4/4, and 5/4: amateur guitarists out there, good luck trying to pull off these polyrhythms!

  I once read in a Very Serious Newspaper that Johnson was "a fine blues musician who had trouble counting to 12." No doubt, that same critic wrote somewhere else that Guernica was proof positive that Picasso was a fine painter who had trouble drawing horses."

  (oh, and the "Seth" in the comment flame-war is not me, just for the record)

Some additional reading August 28th from 13:30 to 14:33:

• Steve Jobs obituary published by Bloomberg – Telegraph – Ooopsie.
  "An obituary of very-much-alive Apple founder Steve Jobs has been accidentally published by the respected Bloomberg business news wire."
• Brain Transplant – SuperDuper! I already own, but WInClone I should investigate, and see if I need it in the future
• Nikon D90 plus hands-on preview: Digital Photography Review – I probably won't update my Nikon D80 to the D90, but just in case…
• Nikon | Universcale – One of the coolest corporate promos ever to strike the web, Nikon's „Universcale is an exquisitely rendered interactive Flash animation conveying epic orders of cosmic magnitude. Spanning subatomic particles on the left to the entire known universe on the right, this infinite yardstick is one technical chart you'll want to play with for a while…

Some additional reading August 27th from 11:14 to 22:39:

• New Haven Advocate: Tom Tomorrow's Convention Blog – interview with Tom Hayden – "Hayden: No … I've been to thirteen conventions, I've been in protests, I've been in party politics, I'm 68 years old and I was retiring out, but there's this emphasis on the fortieth anniversary (of the '68 Chicago convention), which is kind of a background noise, and so I had some books coming out, one of them on the Chicago trials, so City Lights suggested I come here. I've been on about five panels but along the way as I was preparing the books, my son and daughter-in-law were pushing me on Obama, so I became a convert to Obama just when I thought I was retiring out. And I keep telling him, that that's his message that people like me should retire out."
• Media Matters – Tom Brokaw, historian – "Following Clinton's convention address, [Tom] Brokaw on why it's tricky for the Dem to attack the GOP candidate: "When John McCain was sitting in a prison in Hanoi, Bill Clinton was writing letters to his ROTC commander trying to get out of the draft!""
• Media Matters – AP "FactCheck" distorted Dems' claim that McCain voted with Bush "90 percent of the time" – "According to Congressional Quarterly, McCain's presidential support scores (the percentage of roll call votes on which he sided with Bush's position) for each completed individual year of Bush's presidency are"
• Hullabaloo – Village Fair – For instance, I was riding on a tram yesterday with a delegate from the midwest who was festooned with Hillary buttons. I asked her if she was excited about the speech to come and if she expected it to be controversial. She said that she hoped Hillary felt free to bask in the glory a little bit but that she knew she would come through for Obama. I asked her if she was going to vote for her in the roll call and she said she was sent there by people who voted for Clinton and she wanted to cast that vote. But she also said that as soon as he was announced the winner she was going to take off all of her Hillary buttons and put on her new collection of Obama buttons, which she pulled out of her bag to show me. I asked if she would work to get him elected and she chuckled and said, "of course I will, I'm president of the Democratic Club!"
• PUMA Hunting – "From the media's coverage of the convention, you would think that Denver is the gathering ground for such voters, that you can find a PUMA behind every bush and around ever tree. The reality on the ground is that the vast majority of Clinton supporters here will be voting for Obama in the fall, many of them enthusiastically. You can observe throughout Denver Democrats wearing Hillary shirts with Obama pins, or vice versa.
  And yet, we are treated this morning by punditry and articles about how "many Clinton supporter say speech didn't heal divisions."
  It is one of the favorite tactics of the traditional media to build coverage upon false equivalency in order to portray friction or controversy in a given situation. A global warming expert–representing the opinion of 99% of scientists–is put up against a fringe climate change denier and is presented as being on equal footing."
• BPA Free Bottle and Sippy Cup Cheat Sheet : SafeMama | One-stop child safety – BPA Free Bottle and Sippy Cup Cheat Sheet
• Chicago Sun-Times :: Chicagopedia :: – Fun reference library
• WordPress Coda Clips Collection –
• McSweeney's Internet Tendency: Phrases Commonly Used by 1950s Housewives That Were Often Misinterpreted by the Housewives' Husbands as Blatant Requests for Sex. – "I think it's time to wax the linoleum."

  "Has anyone seen my muffin pan?"

  "Looks like I forgot to pay the milkman."

  "I'll just put my pie on the windowsill to cool."

  "How about brown-bagging it for lunch tomorrow, dear?"

  "Yahtzee!"

  "Ward, it's time you and the Beaver had a little chat."

A few interesting links for August 26th through August 27th:

• Build a Green Roof – Wired How-To Wiki – "Consider installing a living or green roof. Plants on your roof can reduce your heating and cooling bills and protect your house's waterproofing. That's /in addition/ to all the other good things, like cleaning air, filtering water and providing a feast for your senses."
  Structural Engineering might be the most important step. Wouldn't want your beautiful garden to come crashing down on your dinner table, would you?
• Random Thoughts – "Spouse speeches at these conventions usually are fairly forgettable. I’ve been trying to remember some from the past. The only presidential candidate wife whose convention appearance I remember is Pat Nixon in 1972, for some reason. And I don’t remember if she actually spoke. I just remember that when she appeared on the stage she got huge applause, which I took to be in sympathy. Wow, Pat, you put up with that creep. How do you do it?

  I also remember one veep spouse speech — Marilyn Quayle, 1992. She was so hateful, so arrogant, so smug, she was nearly unbearable. I remember the reactions of co-workers, mostly women, the next day — usually a finger down the throat, to suggest gagging. I think that she and Pat Buchanan’s declaration of culture war helped Bill Clinton win the election."

Some additional reading August 25th from 12:22 to 15:10:

• Chinaskis and All You Can Eat Bacon – "one thing Chinaski’s has kept around is the Monday-night baskets of unlimited bacon. 1935 N Damen Ave at Homer St "
  Unlimited bacon? And Bukowski?
• I Am a Brilliant Original and Idiosyncratic Thinker but Don't Ever Disagree With Me – Richard Cohen a L.I.N.O., has perfected his wine. Matt Yglesias wonders why anyone reads Cohen:
  "Cohen clearly relishes his self-conception as an independent thinker. And presumably the whole reason he’s glad to be a Washington Post columnist in part because that gives him a large audience of people who care about politics. Given all that, of course people will sometimes disagree with him! But that’s now how he sees it, and certainly he sees no need to engage with his critics on the merits — instead, they’re just like Communists!

  The whole mindset is bizarre but also bizarrely widespread. You’d think that people who write for a living about public affairs wouldn’t be so thin-skinned."