Seriously, do they have adult supervision there? Forget the immortal "the candidate was not speaking for the campaign" bit, this is better.

A scant day or so ago, with much fanfare, McCain introduced Gov. Sarah Palin as his choice for the office of Vice President of the United States. Within hours, we all knew that she was under an ethics cloud, and now we see that earlier this month, on her own official webpage, she praised Senator Obama's energy plan!

August 4, 2008, Fairbanks, Alaska - Governor Sarah Palin today responded to the energy plan put forward by the presumptive Democratic nominee for President, Illinois Senator Barack Obama.

“I am pleased to see Senator Obama acknowledge the huge potential Alaska’s natural gas reserves represent in terms of clean energy and sound jobs,” Governor Palin said. “The steps taken by the Alaska State Legislature this past week demonstrate that we are ready, willing and able to supply the energy our nation needs.”

The page is purged now, of course, but Google never forgets!

How in the hell do they miss this? Your short list selection for the Veep praised the opponent's policy? On her official site? Never mind we're learning how badly she screwed the pooch running a town of 6,000, never mind she vocally supports hunting wolves from helicopters (something even my hunter friends find disgusting,) she is on record praising the opponent! That should have kicked her off the list immediately! I can only wonder who is in charge here, because it seems like nobody did any vetting, like say reading an Alaskan newspaper where the ethics charges are front page news.

Being a West Wing geek, I'm imagining the meltdown Toby would have over this.

OK, a small portion of it.

As anyone who watches the Heavy Metal Sunday posts knows, I spend a good amount of time cruising YouTube. It's a great resource, filled with some amazing gems among the dross, but the bane of the literate user's experience are the comment threads. Maybe I missed the pop-up on the front page of YouTube's site that says "Abandon all Rules of English, ye who enter here."

The comment threads are where the bottom feeders of the net congregate. Horrible spelling, atrocious grammar, excessive or no punctuation.. it's all there, with liberal usage of profanity.

But now we have hope. Comment Snob It allows you to filter out the worst offenders the same way that spam comments and poorly rated comments are hidden. Better yet, it tells you why the comment is hidden!

I love Firefox, and in fact out-geek kshandra when it comes to tweaking and adding to it and Thunderbird.

OK, VH-1.

VH-1 Classic is running 80 Hours of the 80's this weekend. Very cool, lots of fun videos. But...

They're doing it alphabetically. WTF?

"So Doug," I hear your assembled voices ask, "how would you do it?"

Vertical tastings. Start with a video from 1980, then 1981, 1982, and so on through 1989. That would give a better look at changing styles and looks, along with making it possible to catch any act at any time.

Why I'm not ruler of the world yet is beyond me.

Jon once said that if you wanted to torture him, just tie him to a chair and make him watch Bon Jovi's first five videos.

VH-1 Classic just took care of that. Oh, the hair!

Wait, they made a crappy video for I Don't Like Mondays? why?

I freaking hate heat waves.

I was already voting for the guy; but when he made his comments about American soldiers not fighting for a Red America, or a Blue America, but for the United States of America, I was standing up, cheering, and in tears.

He gets it. When I was a member of Delta Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th United States Infantry, I roomed with a fundamentalist Christian from Kansas, a former D.C. gang member, and a kid from Chicago who was God's gift to women (God seems to have failed to inform the women of this.. guy struck out more than an A Leaguer facing a curve ball for the first time.) Add in me, your typical suburban California liberal, and we couldn't be more different. But we were Fire Team 2 of 1st Squad, 2nd Platoon, of the Delta Dawgs. We may not have agreed on anything, from music to religion to hobbies, but we were a team.

Great speech.

Ensign Wheatbiscuit is explaining things to the Captain.

"Sir, I was merely telling a tale to the lads when I hit this lever here like this.." clang!

Klaxons, flashing lights, mass panic.

"Mr. Wheatbiscuit," rumbled the Captain, "you are an imbecile."

( A bit more about my digestive system than most of you want to hear. (Not overly graphic) )

OK, not exactly like that, but trust me, this was more fun to read (and write!) than the more realistic story.

HEAVEN IS HOTTER THAN HELL

The temperature of heaven can be rather accurately computed. Our authority is the Bible, Isaiah 30:26 reads, "Moreover, the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold as the light of seven days." Thus, heaven receives from the moon as much radiation as the earth does from the sun, and in addition seven times seven (forty nine) times as much as the earth does from the sun, or fifty times in all. The light we receive from the moon is one ten-thousandth of the light we receive from the sun, so we can ignore that. With these data we can compute the temperature of heaven: The radiation falling on heaven will heat it to the point where the heat lost by radiation is just equal to the heat received by radiation. In other words, heaven loses fifty times as much heat as the earth by radiation. Using the Stefan-Boltzmann fourth power law for radiation:

(H/E)4 = 50 where E is the absolute temperature of the earth, 300°K (273+27).

This gives H the absolute temperature of heaven, as 798° K (525°C, 979°F).

The exact temperature of hell cannot be computed but it must be less than 444.6°C, the temperature at which brimstone or sulfur changes from a liquid to a gas. Revelation 21:8: "But the fearful and unbelieving... shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone." A lake of molten brimstone [sulfur] means that
its temperature must be at or below the boiling point, which is 444.6°C. (Above that point, it would be a vapor, not a lake.)

We have then, the temperature of heaven, 525°C (979°F). The temperature of hell, between 115.2 and 445°C (239.4 to 832.3°F). Therefore heaven is hotter than hell.

Applied Optics (1972, 11 A14)

In the past two days, I've racked up close to five hours of overtime, didn't have a lunch break either day, and put close to 500 miles on the truck. Last night, I got maybe an hour of sleep.

So, yeah. No work for me today.

The irony here is that these long days aren't being caused by a massive overload of work, we're just not getting out of the warehouse! I start at 0530. Yesterday, it was about 0730 before I finally knew what I was carrying and where it was going. Of course, some of the material was at 7th St., so add the time to shoot down there and load more stuff. End result? I made my first delivery of the day to a site about 2 miles from the warehouse at 0900 - 3.5 hours after I came in. Then I had to drive this route.

The late start meant that I had to race to make all my deliveries before people left for the day. So, no lunch, no breaks, and utter exhaustion. which probably explains why I couldn't sleep last night. When I'm this wiped out, sleep is difficult.

Antarctica, the way it should be:



Sigh. Stalinist penguins....

I'm watching Gene Simmons' Family Jewels. Gene's son, on his first night out with his new car, gets towed. In an attempt to get his car back without letting his dad know, he and a friend ride the LA subway. There, they try to raise money from other riders. One of them is Ed Green. And it looked like he was reading a Turtledove novel.

Just a warning, as the elections get closer, expect more of these.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/08/22/business/WBobama23.php?page=2

The Tax Policy Center, a research group run by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, has done the most detailed analysis of the Obama and McCain tax plans, and it has published a series of fascinating tables. For the bottom 80 percent of the population - those households making $118,000 or less - McCain's various tax cuts would mean a net savings of about $200 a year on average, in 2012. Obama's proposals would bring $900 a year in savings that year. So for most people, Obama is the tax cutter in this campaign. He would then pay for the cuts, at least in part, by raising taxes on the affluent to a point where they would eventually be slightly higher than they were under Clinton. For these upper-income families, the Tax Policy Center's comparisons with McCain are even starker. McCain would cut taxes for the top 0.1 percent of earners - those making an average of $9.1 million - by another $190,000 a year, on top of the Bush reductions. Obama would raise taxes on this
top 0.1 percent by an average of $800,000 a year.

http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/11/news/economy/candidates_taxproposals_tpc/index.htm

Under both plans, all American taxpayers could pay a price for their tax cuts: a bigger deficit. The Tax Policy Center estimates that over 10 years, McCain's tax proposals could increase the national debt by as much as $4.5 trillion with interest, while Obama's could add as much as $3.3 trillion. The reason: neither plan would raise the amount of revenue expected under current tax policy - which assumes all the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts expire by 2011. And neither plan would raise enough to cover expected government costs during those 10 years.

And the TPC itself:

http://209.85.135.104/search?q=cache:VUn1EWUSlK8J:www.taxpolicycenter.org/UploadedPDF/411693_CandidateTaxPlans.pdf+tax+policy+center+mccain+obama&hl=de&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=de

Those at the top of the income scale benefit from a number of provisions in the McCain tax plan in 2009. Senator McCain would raise the estate tax exemption from $3.5 million to $5 million and would drastically cut the rate on estates above that amount to 15 percent from 45 percent. In addition, the benefits of the cuts in the corporate income tax would accrue largely to those at the top of the income distribution because of the progressive nature of the distribution of capital income. In addition, the extension of the AMT patch would benefit households in the 80th to 95th percentile, reducing the amount of AMT that they would owe or sparing them from the tax altogether. In contrast, more moderate- and lower-income households would tend to benefit only from the increased dependent exemption. And that increase would not benefit households that do not owe individual income tax under current law. Thus, while Senator McCain’s plan provides a tax cut to nearly 60 percent of all households, fewer than one in five households in the bottom quintile and less than half those in the second quintile would see their taxes go down.

Not really.

But to celebrate Burning Man, which gets underway today, we have the first of two special weeks of HMS.. First up, the mighty Judas Priest from 1982's Screaming for Vengeance tour.. Desert Plains!



Our second number was suggested by that crazed Russian metal head, dalen_talas. Deep Purple, live at the California Jam, April 6, 1974, with Burn



Join us next week for the thrilling conclusion!

Oh, a request for the graphically-abled among you. Anybody able to make an icon of the Burning Man with his arm raised with the metal fist? TIA.

( Dude! High School Meme! Excelmente! )

The icon is a pretty good approximation of how I looked back then.

Got some cleaning done today. Specifically, I mopped the kitchen (it will need a second pass, and I need a new mop) and cleaned off the dining table.

Before

After

Tomorrow, I need to do a run to the store. I think I'll pick up the new mop then. It's weird, and probably a result of my Army days, but I get more excited about cleaning supplies than Kiri. Of course, I've also worked as a janitor, so it's in my blood. I may swing by Cost Plus World Market and pick up a second wine rack for the table. Then I'm attacking the living room! If time permits, the bathroom.

One very weird thing. I went down this morning to do a load of laundry, only to find damp clothes in both the washer and drier. I pulled the laundry out of the washer, started my load, and when I cam back, nothing had moved. So I pulled the load out of the drier, and repeated the process. Go down again, discover the drier has no heat, feed it more quarters - and the other apartment's laundry is still there. Now, nearly ten hours later, and nothing has moved. Never mind that the notoriously cranky machine has futzed up again, who leaves their wet clothes in a shared laundry room all day on a weekend?

My beloved Giants clawed their way to another win today, that's four in a row, close games, all won with small ball. The way we won Thursday was classic.

In the bottom of the ninth, Emmanuel Burriss, a rookie, shows remarkable patience and draws a walk. He steals second. Moves to third on a Randy Winn sacrifice fly. And then comes home when a wild pitch gets away from the Marlins catcher. Walk-off run without a single hit being recorded, and Burriss only advanced one base on each play.

All three of you!

As y'all know, kshandra is currently en route to Burning Man, and I've selected three special tracks for tomorrow and next week. But next Sunday is also burn night, and I want to add some bonus videos. So, in the spirit of community building and not wearing pants that sums up That Thing In The Desert, I'm passing the buck throwing open the floor for suggestions. Only four rules.

1. The video must have an embed code on YouTube or whatever site you find it on.

2. The video should be metal, or really hard rock.

3. The video should be of some relation to Burning Man. Deserts, fire, weird naked people, etc.

4. The video should be of at least decent quality.

Let's have our own festival! Banging Man!

Posted in one of the SJ Games forums, not written by me.

John McCain had this to say a couple of months ago when he was asked how his experiences it Vietnam shaped him to be President:

"I kind of reacted the way I did because I have a reluctance to talk about my experiences," he said, noting that he has huge admiration for the "heroes" who served with him in the POW camp and said the experience taught him to love the U.S. because he missed it so much.

"I am always reluctant to talk about these things," McCain said.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/07/mccain-in-colom.html

He's so reluctant to talk about it that it's his campaign's answer for why he doesn't know how many houses he has

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/08/21/mccain_spokesmans_retort_obama.html

"This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years -- in prison,"

He uses it to explain why he volunteered his wife for a topless beauty pageant:

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/08/15/christian-pac-to-air-pro-obama-ad/

“These smears on John McCain’s character and faith expose the utter hypocrisy of Barack Obama’s claim to represent a new kind of politics. It’s disgraceful.” He went on to say that Americans “know that John McCain’s faith and character were tested and forged in ways few can fathom.”

He uses it to explain why he wasn't cheating :

http://tinyurl.com/6d4ur6

“The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous,” Ms. Wallace said.

He uses it to explain why he likes Pittsburgh (or Green Bay; they're hard to tell apart):

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/07/in-pennsylvania.html

"Asked what first comes to his mind when he thinks of Pittsburgh, McCain chuckled, "the Steelers. I was a mediocre high school athlete but I loved and adored the sports but the Steelers really made a huge impression on me particularly in my early years."

And then McCain told a rather moving story about his time as a P.O.W. "When I was first interrogated and really had to give some information because of the pressures, physical pressures on me, I named the starting lineup, defensive line of the Pittsburgh Steelers as my squadron mates.""

He uses it in advertisements:

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16017.html

He uses it to defend his health care policy:

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/04/21/elizabeth-edwards-responds-to-mccain-over-cheap-shot/?eref=ib_politicalticker

“It’s a cheap shot but I did have a period of time where I didn’t have very good health care, I had it from another government,” said McCain, referring to the years he spent as a prisoner of war. “Look, I know what it’s like not to have health care.”

He uses it to explain why he liked a 1970s band in the 1960s:

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/08/15/mccain-rises-to-abbas-defense/

“If there is anything I am lacking in, I’ve got to tell you, it is taste in music and art and other great things in life,” McCain joked. “I’ve got to say that a lot of my taste in music stopped about the time I impacted a surface-to-air missile with my own airplane and never caught up again.”

Does reluctance have another definition I'm not aware of?

Ganked from the equally odd kengr

Your Quirk Factor: 67%

You're so quirky, it's hard for you to tell the difference between quirky and normal. No doubt about it, there's little about you that's "normal" or "average."

( and another one )