Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Lifehacker has a great list of tips to help maximize your influence in the election. The most important one is the last one, and it’s the one I’ve been trying to explain to people for months.
McCain is not going to do anything about speeding on my street and Obama is not going to cut my property taxes. Some guy living and working right here in my city has a helluva lot more impact on my (daily) life than the POTUS.
Act local: Your local county or municipal government are more accessible, and are far more likely to have power over things that affect your life day-to-day, from potholes to public transportation, arts funding to property taxes; third parties and independent candidates are actual forces to be reckoned with; ballot measures, voter propositions and referendums in some states and districts allow laws to be created or stricken by popular demand; and campaign budgets are relatively meager, so even small donations go a long way. Win or lose, at least you’ll know you made a significant impact.
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Friday, October 10, 2008
Just for fun, let’s take a look at what has happened the last few times I’ve taken a vacation.
- Late August, 2005: I go to Europe to celebrate my girlfriend’s birthday. Katrina wipes out New Orleans.
- October, 2007: I go to Hawaii to get married. My good friend, mentor, and business partner dies of a heart attack.
- October, 2008: I go to Savannah, GA to celebrate my one-year wedding anniversary. The stock market crashes.
As far as I can remember, I didn’t take any sort of vacation at all in 2006. You should probably thank me.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
I simply cannot have been the only one who watched the vice-presidential debate tonight and thought that Palin’s answers were eerily similar to this famous speech. I mean, really? Really? Nucular? Poliferation? Infastructure? Here’s a random quote I grabbed from the transcript:
John McCain, in referring to the fundamental of our economy being strong, he was talking to and he was talking about the American workforce. And the American workforce is the greatest in this world, with the ingenuity and the work ethic that is just entrenched in our workforce. That’s a positive. That’s encouragement. And that’s what John McCain meant.
It’s a shame that Biden didn’t win this debate on the merits of his arguments, because in general they were pretty good. He won it simply because his opponent failed to speak in logical, complete sentences. Here’s another good one:
I’m not one to attribute every man — activity of man to the changes in the climate. There is something to be said also for man’s activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet.
Am I alone in asking, “WTF?”
Monday, September 29, 2008
Time to start stock-piling water, kids.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
There was a story this morning about gay marriage on LA’s 89.3 KPCC. I was infinitely more offended by the fact that reporter Kelly Wilkinson pronounced the word “rural” as “rurl” and the word “unfamiliar” as “unfermiliar” than I was about any part of the gay rights argument.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
“I would never had done any of this if I thought there would have been an accident.” — Jim Abernethy, Scuba Adventures
Right. Of course. You’re just dumping bloody fish chunks into the ocean and then letting people swim with really aggressive sharks. What could possibly go wrong?
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
You have to get out of bed pretty early to pull one over on the local coroner in Los Angeles.
Southern California kicker Mario Danelo was drunk when he plunged over a cliff to his death, but the cause of his death was “undetermined,” according to a coroner’s report released Monday.
He’s a football player in excellent physical health. He got really, really drunk. He climbed a large wall and fell over 100′. I don’t see the mystery here. Tragedy? Yes. Mystery? No.
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
PETA Ups Anti-KFC Campaign With Buckets o’ Blood
A label on the bucket says “Just for you, KFC’s suppliers cram thousands of chickens into filthy sheds, sear baby chicks’ beaks off with a hot wire, slam the birds into crates (breaking their wings and legs), slice their throats open and scald them to death while they’re still conscious. Enjoy.”
The buckets are reminiscent of the “Unhappy Meals” PETA began distributing in 2000 as part of a public relations assault against McDonald’s. The boxes, similar to the Happy Meals that McDonald’s serves to children, contained a stuffed doll that looked like Ronald McDonald holding a bloody butcher’s knife.
Tuesday, April 15, 2003
Your homework project:
Compare and contrast the information contained in the article quoted below with Keats’ assertion (poetic, true, but an assertion nonetheless) that “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.”
NBC is planning to make a movie about Pfc. Jessica Lynch, the rescued American POW, even if it doesn’t get her permission. Can the network do that? Doesn’t NBC need to buy the movie rights to her life?
Yes, it can, and, no, it doesn’t - so long as NBC sticks to the facts.