The election is five days away and, while I would hope that everyone who’s voting has figured out where the candidates stand on the issues, I’m going to post this video to make it perfectly clear, to those who are interested, where Obama stands. This was broadcast over six or so major stations last night. It’s a thirty minute long “infomercial” and it’s an unprecedented move for a presidential candidate. The price tag on this is some three to five million dollars which pretty much no candidate ever has at this point in the race. He had this money because he’s had an enormous amount of donations. His average donation is around $100. Last month he raised $150,000,000 that way. That’s a lot of Americans handing over some hard earned cash for something they believe in. That’s not to say that anyone should vote for him because his numbers are impressive. No one wants an election to be bought. Those numbers should tell you that maybe there’s something going on with this guy that’s special though. Anyway, here it is:
Month: October 30, 2008
Sarah Palin did and interview with Brian Williams recently, with McCain by her side of course, and was asked an interesting question:
Now obviously she doesn’t condone abortion clinic bombers but it’s a little ridiculous that she couldn’t call them terrorists. Why couldn’t she say the word? Is she associated with an abortion clinic bomber? Is she afraid of offending the abortion clinic bomber crowd? Is she just an idiot? The answer is probably the last suggestion there but that whole little conversation is interesting regardless.
Another interesting campaign story is the one about a girl who was “attacked by a big black man who carved the letter ‘B’ into her cheek”. This didn’t actually happen but guess who reported it anyway?
This was a McCain campaign volunteer who has obviously gone off the deep end either in her support for McCain or her hatred of black people. Seriously, she didn’t have to say that this imaginary attacker was a black guy but she did. That could have had some serious implications for the racial divide in that city and it would have been based on a lie. I kind of hope that she cut that deep enough into her face that she’ll be stuck with a ‘B’ on her cheek for the rest of her life. It would be like a cooler real life version of the Scarlett Letter where you don’t have to feel sympathy for the person branded.
Lastly, I got my sample ballot yesterday and I would like to point out to everyone that we are voting for more than just the president on November 4th. Just to make things easy on anyone who’s lazy but might have some inclination towards voting, here are some quick links to find out about these people.
For the US Senate:
- Frank Lautenberg
- Dick Zimmer
- Jeffrey Boss
Personally, I’m going for Lautenberg. Zimmer has some bad ideas on how prisons should be run like taking away all luxuries from the prisoners to save money. That sounds fine until you realize how much more dangerous a prison becomes when you don’t have some form of entertainment to keep those guys and gals docile. I know this because my dad runs a prison. He also seems somewhat along the lines of a neo-conservative. Lautenberg is a little more liberal than I like but he’s better than Zimmer, to me, by far. And Jeff Boss is just some crazy truther who thinks people in Mexico have tried to kill him to shut him up.
For the House of Representatives:
- David Kurkowski
- Frank LoBiondo
- Gary Stein
- Peter Boyce
- Costantino Rozzo
- Just some crazy Buddhist guy.
Personally, I’m going Kurkowski. LoBiondo is the incumbent and the last time I looked at his record he was pretty much a mirror image of Bush. He’s a partisan hack. The only thing I know of that he’s stood his own ground on is the bail out bill which he voted against but it’s questionable whether that was the best way to vote or not. In this case I’m kind of voting against LoBiondo instead of for Kurkowski. Kurkowski was a school teacher and is a small business owner and doesn’t have much to say but at least he’s not a Bush clone. The other three couldn’t even be bothered to make a proper web site that says anything about their ideas so I can’t be bothered to vote for them.
For Cape May County Sheriff:
- George Hallett
- Gary Schaffer
There isn’t much info on these two other than their resumes and I like Hallett’s more. He’s been in a secret service agent, a CIA agent, and a police officer. He also sounds level headed. Schaffer has just been a long time Ocean City cop. I trust the guy with the diverse background over the guy who’s biggest problem for the last 25 years has been rounding up underage drinkers. Also, I was told that Schaffer, while walking the streets campaigning, found a little girl and told her to bring his flyer up to someone’s door instead of doing it himself. Apparently this little girl didn’t have a clue what she was doing or who the guy was. That just sounds weird.
For Lower Township Mayor:
- Harvey roach
- Glenn Douglass
- Michael Beck
There’s hardly any info on these three. I’m leaning towards Beck because of some vague idea of his positions but I’m still unsure about this one. Check them out for yourself.
That’s the low-down though. If you’re voting on the 4th for president and don’t want to leave those other parts blank or just check off who you want based on party then it might be worth looking into these guys. It doesn’t take very long, honest.
The FDA just gave the go ahead for doctors to use magnets to tickle your brain cells when you’re depressed. Apparently someone out there has been messing with something they call transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). The idea is to take magnets and use them to stimulate parts of the brain responsible for things like mood regulation. There have been studies that showed that this was effective for a lot of people suffering from clinical depression and, of course, there are no side effects. The downside to these studies is that the placebo groups didn’t get a very convincing dose of fake therapy. Obviously, if you’re comparing two groups and neither of them can be used a control then your results aren’t going to be all that acceptable. It’s interesting anyway. It makes you wonder how long it will be until we no longer have to be sad, ever. It also makes you wonder if that’s really a good thing. Check it out:
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/dn14998-magnetic-brain-therapy-gets-us-green-light.html
There has been a lot of talk about ACORN. This is an nationwide organization that aims to register low income people and minorities to vote. Recently it’s been brought to the attention of the national media that in some areas ACORN has turned in a lot of fake registrations. You can hear daily from the Republicans about how this is voter fraud and evidence that Obama is trying to steal the election. It’s not.
First of all, the most important point, Obama has not used ACORN at all during the general election.
Now that that’s out of the way, there are very good reasons why this has become such an issue. ACORN was paying people by how many registrations they turned in. The natural reaction for some would be to write up a bunch of fake registrations and get a lot of money for no work. These people have, for the most part, been fired. The registrations they turned in were flagged by ACORN as being fake. In some states every registration collected must be turned in to the election board so that the board can be in charge of deciding if something is fake or not. ACORN followed this rule and sent the bad registrations with the good and flagged each to be clear. That’s it. That’s the whole situation. Now, somehow, ACORN is destroying democracy and they’re becoming a focal point of the election. Remember those issue things? Yeah, all that stuff about policy and the real problems our country is facing? The GOP would apparently like you to ignore those things and focus on manufactured crap like this ACORN “issue”.
Also, for the record, this isn’t voter fraud. Voter fraud would be someone actually showing up and voting illegally. Brave New Films has put out a video that gives a good explanation for all this. They get into stuff about how Republicans want voter turn out to be low, and I’m sure there are some that do, but that may be the unfair part of this video. Anyway, watch.
Honestly, I’m getting tired of hearing only three words from this five minute long conversation. It seems everywhere I turn there’s someone repeating the phrase “spread the wealth” as if those were the only words Obama said to Joe Wurzelbacher from Ohio. This is usually followed by claims that Obama is a socialist, a communist, and wants to punish successful people. This even sometimes flows into claims that Obama is a terrorist, un-American, and isn’t even a natural-born US citizen.
The level of xenophobia lately is crazy. In the news I’ve seen anything from a man cackling as he shows a camera his stuffed monkey with an Obama hat that he calls “Little Hussein” to someone’s Halloween decorations that include a lynched ghost with “Obama” written on it as well as “Husain” (yes, it was spelled wrong). There is such a huge amount of disinformation, racism, fear, and just plain hate lately that I wouldn’t even know where to begin to start correcting some of it so I guess I’ll just correct one thing.
Here is the entire “Joe the Plumber” conversation.
And before you get swept away in all the non-sense propaganda out there, take at least one look at FactCheck.org. Seriously, don’t be stupid.
I know there aren’t many people who like opera or even know anything about it but I like it a lot. That being said, I feel the need to expose people to tidbits here and there that might break the stereotype of opera being some boring, stuffy, old crap with funny singing.
This, the Batter My Heart aria, is probably the most moving part of John Adams’ opera Doctor Atomic. This premiered in 2005. That’s right, people still write new operas. You might notice, if you bother to listen, that this sounds nothing like Bach, Mozart, or Beethoven. Contrary to popular belief, classical music comes in many flavors and the well known flavors tend to be very old and out of use.
Adams is a post-minimalist composer. Essentially that means rhythm is very important to his sound as well as lingering on a chord for long periods of time. For anyone who’s into jazz, it’s a similar idea to modal jazz. For anyone who’s into rock, Sigur Ros is a good example of something in the same vein. The “post” part means he’s allowed to travel out of the boundaries of the rules that minimalism created that I’ve mentioned already.
Anyway, this aria is pretty high on energy which is not what one would normally think of when they hear the word “opera”. The words are taken from a poem by John Donne. What’s happening is Oppenheimer is combating the moral issues created in himself while creating the atomic bomb. Take a listen:
Just for fun, I think I’ll post one of John Adams’ early works for piano. This one I just like.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3abjsYUkk4 (embedding was disabled for this one)
I was pleasantly surprised by a video game today. I usually follow PC gaming so I know what’s coming out and all but the game that caught my attention tonight was a Playstation 3 title called Little Big Planet. The developers bring a novel idea that, to me, speaks to the perpetually greater amount of connectivity that technology is bringing to our world.
First of all, the game looks fun. It’s a side scrolling platform game. The catch is that it’s a pseudo-sandbox setup. You make your own levels and play other people’s levels. Essentially you can make whatever you want. Seriously, it’s extremely open ended to the point where one person has built a working calculator in the beta version of the game. The things you build can also be shared online with other players. You get ratings, friends, comments, etc. They seem to have tied social networking into their video game.
If this all works out, I think this will be a big step towards showing the real power of video games. There are so many positives here. They give people an outlet for creativity and creative thinking instead of being confined to a linear path. They give people the opportunity to spread that expression of themselves around the world instantly and even get noticed if they’re aspiring game producers. They give people a chance to learn through the game as essentially anything is possible (see calculator). I feel like I’m forgetting a bunch of things that I was thinking about earlier but you get the picture. Extrapolate.
Anyway, seeing is believing. Here it is:
I don’t think that I could say that with a straight face in real life. I know I’m not stupid, but I’ll often argue against the things I think I know if I can’t find someone to do it for me. I’m pretty much in a constant state of questioning whether I’m right or not on any number of points so I couldn’t possibly be arrogant enough to tell anyone that I’m smarter than them…. unless someone out there thinks that’s a completely inaccurate portrait of me.
Anyway, I found this article today:
http://www.physorg.com/news142185056.html
Supporting what many of us who are not musically talented have often felt, new research reveals that trained musicians really do think differently than the rest of us. Vanderbilt University psychologists have found that professionally trained musicians more effectively use a creative technique called divergent thinking, and also use both the left and the right sides of their frontal cortex more heavily than the average person.
I think this study is pretty much a load of crap personally. First of all, I know you don’t need millions of people to make a psychological study statistically significant but forty people? Also, the musicians had higher IQ as a whole? Doesn’t that mean that they picked people who had higher IQs for the musicians side of the experiment? These people failed the chicken vs the egg test. And the last thing I’ll point out, although not the last thing that could be pointed out, is that I’ve met a hell of a lot of really stupid musicians. Maybe classical musicians from this one particular school tend to be smart, but that’s certainly not the whole from my experience.
<Insert closing paragraph that creatively wraps things up here.>
English
Français
Recent Comments