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I've heard the phrase "too big to fail" as a justification for the economic bailout.

I agree with this sentiment because when enough banks fail, and credit markets get tight, industries that have not been playing fast and loose with risk and exposure are affected, and that means real people with good credit are likely to lose jobs, lose income, and lose their houses and can't even sell them in this market to get equity out to stay on their feet.

The government has been playing "laissez-faire" which is what got us into this mess... Not taking any action only continues the failure of government to act. Just because Congress/Corps of Engineers/City of New Orleans/State of Louisiana/FEMA/National Guard failed New Orleans before Katrina blew into town doesn't mean that we shouldn't expect them to do their job and pick up the pieces afterward...

While heads should roll for this kind of financial malfeasance (and let us never forget the price of failed "conservative" economic policy), it's time for the government to act to prevent additional damage to our economic health and national security (yes, I consider it a matter of national security-- historians can correct me if I'm wrong, but the downfall of the greatest civilizations in history have tended to be fundamentally economic in nature).

With that said, I'm not certain the government is pursuing the proper strategy with the current bailout plan.

First, is $700B too little or too much? If it's too little, it's going to be a tough pill to swallow later on to ask for more. I think a better strategy is to mark that value up... yes, up. But, make it a line of credit, meaning that it doesn't all need to be spent if there isn't a need.

By making the pool larger, and sending a signal that the pool will only be drawn upon in extreme cases, the extent of the need for the line of credit is a good indicator of the health of the market.

Secondly, the line of credit would earn interest, and need to be paid back.

Third, the terms of the lines of credit would require that the board of directors be appointed to include government regulators. If the companies are unable to make good on the terms of the credits extended, regulators begin to have increasing control and power to make changes, including, in extreme cases, to resell profitable divisions of the company to get their credit lines back, or to break up the behemoths into smaller digestible chunks for acquisition by local and regional banks.

Fourth, it would allow companies that didn't take over a lot of risk to consume the ones that did. With the proper asset disclosures, well-run, low-risk banks could use the lines of credit to buy the profitable pieces of other floundering companies.

We need more, not less, regulation, and that regulation starts with ensuring we don't have collateral damage from the rampant failures of these banks. It starts by ensuring accountability as a precondition to receiving the lines of credit, and if they fail to pay them back, they lose the ability to continue to do business as usual.

Finally, while I haven't examined the mechanics of how it would work, retroactively cancelling any golden parachutes during the great decline of these companies would send a clear signal to CEOs raiding the coffers of these failing institutions. Congress might call that the "From those to whom much is given, much is expected" Act. Capping salary and providing compensation in the form of stock and performance bonuses seems like a much better parting gift than just pure unadulterated cash. No performance? Then, no bonus! Drove the stock into the ground? Then use your certificates as kindling, or worse.

The History Channel had a great TV show simply called "The Universe", on the human history of our current understanding of the Universe.

As the show proceeded, I found I was pausing the TV and sharing with Christine some footnotes of the history of these discoveries, and the various other ideas I've concocted along the way.

I realized that I had never shared these ideas, and (aside from college level math and Physics classes) lacking the scientific and mathematical sophistication to prove any of them out, I figured I would share them here, warts and all. I'm not aware of anyone else who has had these ideas, so as far as I'm aware, they are my own thoughts that attempt to explain certain phenomena.

These ideas (I hesitate to call them anything approaching even a hypothesis) came to me as I'd read Sagan (in high school) and Hawking (in college).

One idea relates to the Big Bang theory and whether we are in a constantly expanding, contracting or steady state universe. Simply stated, my idea is that the universe continues to expand until the energy imparted upon all of the mass is sufficiently expended such that the universe begins to contract.

As it does, a critical mass begins to coalesce, and once enough of it does, the concentration of mass/gravity/energy gets so great that the fundamental nature of mass/gravity/energy are fundamentally changed for a fraction of a second, and the totality of this primordial mass explodes in (another) big bang. In essence, the entire universe is like a human heart, contracting and expanding in many cycles of creation and destruction.

A particular corollary to this idea is that the universe is comprised of precisely enough matter (not an iota less or more) to cause this cycle to occur/reoccur. Without this corollary, it would leave the door open to the premise that many galaxies could have existed (and presumably were wiped out) at the time of the big bang from a previous big bang, but "missed the party" because the critical mass was accumulated before they were close enough to take part. Interestingly, this may also be a possible explanation for the uniform distribution of cosmic radiation described as the "horizon problem". Of course, a solution to this problem already exists (see Alan Guth's Inflationary Theory)...

Another idea relates to a model to help explain the idea of time dilation (Einstein's theory of relativity).

When you put your hand outside a window of a moving car, you experience the motion of molecules over your hand. The faster you move, the more molecules you experience. So the relationship of air to movement through it is: "the more you move through the more motion of molecules you experience".

If you assume that time is universal (time elapses at any observable point in the universe) and it is independent of matter (in the vacuum of space, time passes whether you are near a massive object or not), but dependent of velocity (a clock on a jet will show the passing of less time than one on the ground), you need a model that allows you to move through space, and experience the passage of less time the faster you move.

Or, the opposite of the experience when you put your hand outside the car... One way to make this analogy conform is to instead consider the cooling effect you feel when you put your hand outside the window. If we assume that matter exudes time, like perspiration comes off an athlete, the faster you move through space time, the more the evaporation effect takes place, and the more cooling effect the athlete experiences.

So, the fabric of space time is like the molecules of air that cause the "evaporation" of time. The faster you move through it, the more "cooling" (dilation of time) you experience.

In this model, time is intrinsic to mass (in nothingness, there is nothing to measure the passing of time-- so this assumes that energy, radiation, matter must exist-- time exudes through it like perspiration through skin), and the speed at which the mass moves through space (the speed at which a mass of air passes over your skin) defines the amount of time that elapses (the cooling capacity of the air to provide the cooling effect).

Just like molecules of air have the ability to absorb moisture through condensation, space time has the ability to "absorb time" relative to the speed mass moves through it. I suspect that this phenomenon, dilation of time, is related to the quantum effect of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle... Here's how I picture that might work: Einstein used the model of the fabric of space time. There exist fundamental "gaps" in this fabric such that no two points can be closer than a Planck distance apart from each other (quantum effect of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle). It's these "gaps" which form the ability of space to "absorb time". The faster you move over this fabric, the more time it is able to wick off. In a sense, you might say that in given "square yard" (or "cubic yard", if you'll admit that space is more like a three dimensional "gel" than a two dimensional "fabric") of space, there is a particular "planck density" at which time can elapse.

The nature of moving closer to the speed of light over it causes you to travel over more "(time consuming) gaps in the fabric of space time"...

Fareed Zakaria at Newsweek agrees with me. Palin is not ready to be VP.

A few weeks ago, I said "Palin Will Either Resign or Sabotage McCain's Campaign"...

I'm going to revise that prediction because I don't think "Mr. Accountability" (as he essentially christened himself during the debate) really means what he says... He won't ask Palin to resign from the ticket for her pathetic interview with Couric... (I know, he can kick her off, but that'd be a huge scandal-- better for him to ask her to resign and offer some kind of lame excuse like "tending to family matters")...

That leaves only one outcome. She's on the "backasswards express" for the duration, which means that Palin, if nothing else, will be the downfall of the McCain campaign.

Forget the Presidential debates... Following the October 2nd VP debate, I'm thinking that at least half of the battleground states (Florida, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Indiana and Missouri) are going to swing to Obama.

These two have a lot in common, in my humble opinion (skip to about 28 seconds in the first video):


Which is a sequence of text from SNL, and which is a candidate for VP by a major political party in the United States of America?

Option 1
Q: Why is it much more challenging (in Afghanistan), can you explain that?
A: The logistics that we're already suggesting here...
Not having enough troops in the area right now...
Um...
The...
Things like the terrain even, in Afghanistan and that border between Pakistan and Afghanistan where
we believe that, um, bin Laden is hidin' out right now, and is such a leader of this terrorist movement...
There, there are many more challenges there...
So again...
I believe that a surge in Afghanistan also, will lead us to victory there, as it has proven to have done in Iraq...
And, as I say, Katie, that we can not afford to retreat, to withdraw in Iraq...
That's not going to get us any better off in Afghanistan either...
And as our leaders are telling us in our military, we do need to ramp it up in Afghanistan, counting on our friends and allies to assist with us there, because these terrorists, who hate America, they hate what we stand for, with th.. the freedoms, the democracy, the women's rights, the tolerance, they hate what it is that we represent, and our allies too, and our friends, what they represent...
If we were to allow a stronghold to be captured by these terrorists then the world is in even greater peril than it is today...
We can not afford to lose in Afghanistan.

Option 2:
This, this is amazing, I, I, I almost, I, I almost just about passed out
Unbelievable...
I want you to... look at this picture of this house.
Are you getting this?
You know, it... it's... it's the reason
I wake up, I wake up like anybody
I was taught...
Most Americans...
Education...
Any border...
If if if Helsinki, in Oslo I think
Any publication...
We would...
Isn't it, Isn't it integral?
Isn't it the most important...?
It's the substance?
It's the... It's the very idea that we can unite that makes me feel..
I mean, look...

Or maybe this is more fitting:

Couldn't help myself... again...

Photoshop and iPhoto were open, as were some images just begging to be HDRed.

This is of a terrace just outside of Naples on the island of Capri (yes, the one that Capri pants are named after).

I couldn't help myself, I found another bracketed photo I took of the ruins at Segesta, in Sicily.

Enjoy!

One of the things I'm really glad I did on my European Disney Cruise last summer was to take bracketed exposures of various shots.

That means I can come back and process some HDR (High Dynamic Range) photographs of those scenes.

The one for today is a shot of what I call "The Mouse at the Wheel" (Disney calls it "Helmsman Mickey"), a sculpture in the atrium of the Disney Magic inspired by "The Man at the Wheel", a cenotaph in Gloucester Mass.

I tried to avoid giving the photo the appearance of false color you sometimes get with HDR photos.

The Washington Post reports what John McCain's day was like.

His plane apparently landed around noon, but even before his plane left for DC, "senior Democrats and Republicans at the Capitol were already announcing that a deal in principle had been reached."

Wow, the very act of just flying to DC is apparently enough to get both sides to agree on a plan. But then:

Earlier, McCain had emerged from his office in the Russell Senate Office Building around noon to a crush of reporters, saying nothing as he made his way to Boehner's office. In tow were a trio of his closest allies, Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), as well as top campaign aides Rick Davis and Mark Salter.

Boehner and McCain discussed the bailout plan, but Republican leadership aides described the conversation as somewhat surreal. Neither man was familiar with the details of the proposal being pressed by House conservatives, and up to the moment they departed for the White House yesterday afternoon, neither had seen any description beyond news reports.

Are you friggin kidding me? McCain, now the supposed jewel of the Republican party, who just weeks ago accepted his party's nomination, who put his campaign on hold to bring everyone together about how to save the economy, couldn't be bothered to be brought up to speed about the plan proposed by members of his own party?!

At 1:25 p.m., McCain left Boehner's office through a back door, walking across the Capitol's rotunda to the applause of tourists. Graham conceded the group knew little about the plan the nominee had come to Washington to try to shape.

Wow. Simply wow. Either McCain is an incompetent boob, or his party hates him so much that they'd rather leave him out in the cold, unprepared to even talk about the plan they've been discussing!!

McCain ducked into the ornate Mansfield Room on the Senate side of the Capitol for lunch with colleagues. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, his chief economic adviser, met separately with the House Republicans' top four leaders. But aides said Holtz-Eakin did little of the talking. Instead, he was told in no uncertain terms that the deal touted in the morning had next to no support among the House Republican rank-and-file.

By now it's starting to sound like McCain assumed that the deal was in the bag, that both sides had agreed to the plan, and all he had to do was show up just in time for the photo op of the deal being consummated, and he could walk away the hero, having suspended his campaign to broker the deal, bringing both sides together in a feat of bipartisan patriotism (among cries of God Bless America and "Kum-Ba-Ya")... But sadly it wasn't to be:

At the White House, the gathering turned contentious when House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) brought up a new set of principles that conservative House Republicans had been laid out earlier in the day."

Boehner's move was received poorly by Obama and the other Democrats, who quickly pressed McCain to say whether he supported Boehner's position, according to a detailed account of the meeting. McCain declined to commit, one source said.

Declined to commit, huh? He suspended his campaign to go to Washington and... sit on the fence? He could have done that from the late night talk show circuit...

For much of the day, McCain shuttled between meetings and his Senate office, but rarely came close to the Capitol suites and committee rooms where the negotiations were taking place. He had returned to his Crystal City condominium by 6 p.m., where aides said he continued to work the phones in support of the deal.

Curious, couldn't he have "called it in" from New York?

Maybe the McCain campaign ought to rethink this "Maverick" moniker. It's no use being the guy that's "shaking things up" when you a) don't know what the hell is going on, b) when people in your own party spite you by keeping you in the dark, and c) when you've spent so much time aggravating people they'd rather interpret your efforts as damage and route around it (with apologies to John Gilmore).

I never thought I'd say this, but this article renews my faith (pardon the pun) in organized Christian religion.

The biggest beef I have with organized religion is that a lot of followers are sheep who twist the teachings of their religion that go against the tenets of their faith. A case in point are the "Christians" who protested a painting depicting Jesus washing the feet of Osama bin Laden. (If you missed that controversy, this blog serves as a good introduction-- suffice it to say I am a big fan of the "foot-washing Jesus fans", not the "nunchuck wielding Jesus fans"-- read the article if that strikes you as an odd quote)

Anyway, too often you hear about the evangelical demagogues who are blinded by their ideology and who can't bring themselves to admit that the policies they endorse go contrary to the teachings of Jesus himself.

I'd go so far as to say that I only hear about the demagogues, and not enough of the evangelical progressives.

The other day, though, I read about this new evangelical called Richard Cizik, so when I came across the article above, I had to read on.

He leads the "National Association of Evangelicals". Words that would ordinarily chill me to the bone, but get this-- he's Pro-Environment (it's all God's creation, after all), and has a social conscience for example, regarding poverty (isn't there some quote about the rich and the eye of a needle?) and overpopulation.

A remarkable man, to be sure. If we were stuck next to each other on a trans-Atlantic flight, I'm sure we'd find a lot to disagree on, but this is the kind of guy that gives evangelicals a good name, and I suspect I'd walk away with a healthy respect for the guy.

How bad can a Republican be if he says stuff like "It’s not illogical for someone to conclude that John McCain is going to be more like George Bush than John McCain is going to be like John McCain in 2000"?

"I am a Republican, but I’m not comfortable with giving the Republicans four more years. I don’t see John McCain differing enough from the incumbent, and yet Obama is a work in progress, pretty much, so we’d be taking some risk with him. It’s a conundrum."

Like I said, I don't agree with everything he has to say, but I respect where he's coming from.

According to the independent "Tax Policy Center", here is a breakdown of what a taxpayer can expect based on annual income.

	MCCAIN	OBAMA
Income	Avg. tax bill	Avg. tax bill
Over $2.9M	-$269,364	+$701,885
$603K and up	-$45,361	+$115,974
$227K-$603K	-$7,871	+$12
$161K-$227K	-$4,380	-$2,789
$112K-$161K	-$2,614	-$2,204
$66K-$112K	-$1,009	-$1,290
$38K-$66K	-$319	-$1,042
$19K-$38K	-$113	-$892
Under $19K	-$19	-$567

Earlier this week, my Crapcast DVR decided that it didn't want to record the second episode of the Fox TV show "Fringe". I only realized this after Christine asked me if I'd deleted the episode.

After checking Fox's website, I realized that, in fact, the DVR failed to record the show. Before I could head to iTunes to download the episode, Fox's website seemed to have the show available for free.

After installing a plugin (Firefox calls it the MoveNetworks Quantum Media Player), within minutes I was downloading what appeared to be a near HD quality video stream of the full episode... without ads (well teasers/trailers seems like a small price to pay, but no ads inline, although when I just checked again, there do seem to be a few short ads interspersed)...

Warning: Geek content follows. For those not moderately interested in the mechanics behind this technology, suffice it to say, this is cool stuff, definitely check it out. The rest of this post will delve into the details of how it works.

I was skeptical of the video quality, but the approach that the MoveNetworks technology uses is ingenious. First, they split up the video into what they call "streamlets", or small "digestible" segments of video.

The advantages of this are multiple. First, if any network congestion or slowdowns are encountered by the client (which apparently has logic built in to determine if any frames are dropped), it can request the next streamlet of video at a slightly lower bitrate until the quality of the video matches the capacity of the network connection.

Secondly, this also means that there's very little buffering, and gives each viewer the best quality video that their connection can support at any given time.

Curious, I used tcpdump (for the nontech readers of this blog, this is a packet sniffer that allows the inspection of the data packets used for Internet communications) to identify what's happening underneath the covers.

The first question I wanted to know was whether they were using TCP or UDP. Typically streaming video uses UDP because it is generally a better protocol to use with applications which are time sensitive. In other words, if your connection gets really slow, there's no point in using a packet of data which contains video from 3 seconds ago. Video players that stutter back to 3 seconds ago once the data is obtained would be annoying. Much like Lucy should have done on the chocolate conveyor belt, let the ones go that are already on the floor, and focus on the ones coming down the line.

Interestingly, MoveNetworks uses TCP. With a "streamlet" strategy, they prefer to use the standard HTTP protocol (which uses TCP) which means they can use common web servers like Apache to keep their infrastructure costs low. (More on this in just a bit) Again, because their client has the intelligence to request smaller data packets when necessary, they intend to guarantee that the client only ask for data streams of "digestible size", to help guarantee that they drop very few frames of data.

Incidentally, this is a technique that TCP itself uses in negotiating window sizes. A window size, in the TCP protocol, is a negotiation technique that allows clients and servers to determine the ideal amount of data to be sent. Clients and servers that can handle larger and more packets gradually increase their carrying capacity until transmission failures occur, and then back off to about half that speed. The process continually repeats, providing, on what would on average appear to be 75% of the capacity of the network between the client and the server.

After what appears to be various tracking data being passed back to MoveNetworks, and some SSL traffic (secure traffic presumably intended to verify that the player requesting the data is an authorized player to help ensure that media pirates can't decode or fetch the streams), and a brief XML conversation, multiple HTTP streams are initiated at once to a content distribution network, or CDN. In this case, the CDN used is Limelight Networks, a competitor to the more widely known Akamai. (Note to the LimeLight security team-- you ought to suppress your server's response signature, as it's clear to anyone with a packet sniffer that you're using Apache/2.2.3.(CentOS))

All of this negotiation happens in a matter of 5 seconds or so. When the negotiation and authentication is complete, a standard HTTP request of "GET /qmplivefox/foxvod/ad/3ajn03/E575E001FD8 E254DB2E983A09D3B93F1_0400000003.qss HTTP/1.0" is requested from Limelight servers: "Host: move-od-405.vo.llnwd.net". The user agent is reported as "QSP.21:1[0].R{0-51698}". Interestingly enough, the portion of the user agent R{0-51698} is also requested as a standard HTTP content range header: "Range: bytes=0-51698".

As stated earlier, this is accompanied immediately by two other requests, this time with "Range: bytes=51699-10339" and "Range: bytes=103398-".

Generically, the responses tend to look like this (all standard HTTP stuff): "206 Partial Content", "Accept-Ranges: bytes", "Cache-Control: max-age=864000", "Content-Type: application/qss", "Age: 392446", "Date: Sun, 21 Sep 2008 04:33:06 GMT", "Last-Modified: Tue, 06 Nov 2007 03:41:11 GMT", "Expires: Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:32:20 GMT", "Content-Range: bytes 0-51698/155097", "Content-Length: 51699", "Connection: close".

18ms later, the second response comes back with "Content-Range: bytes 51699-103397/155097", and 1ms after that, "Content-Range: bytes 103398-155096/155097".

Once these streams complete downloading, three new requests are made for 50KB of data each, this time for an incremented URI: "/qmplivefox/foxvod/ad/3ajn03/E575E001FD8E254DB2E983A09D3B93F1_0400000004.qss". It takes just 3 seconds to fetch another 150KB of data, so it would seem the initial packets establish a bitstream that is roughly 50KB/sec. (Compared to the H.264 codec, this bit rate would support a resolution of roughly 352x288@15.2 frames/sec)

Periodically, the https traffic continues to presumably update auth tokens to allow additional streams to be downloaded.

I didn't try to introduce network problems to see how the streams would be throttled back, but evidenced by decent video quality for nearly an hour, my broadband connection was able to sustain video quality that is of impressive quality.

Move has entered into agreements with other TV networks such as ABC and CW, which are also apparently using the Move technology. The client makes similar requests, "GET /vod/BBB87026/hss_113_finale_episode_1785344/A6B4B2BC1D05974993B831362BD5D9E4_0500000007.qss", although the traffic in this case goes to "stream.qec8.qcg1.qcn3.movenetworks.com" instead of to a CDN.

ABC shows a 1 minute ad you can't skip, unlike Fox, for each video "chapter". The ABC stream never got faster than "1623kbps" while watching Lost, and on the CW network, Supernatural never got past "730kbps" on my network. Traceroutes show that the ABC datacenter I'm using is in San Jose, and the CW network is also using the Limelight CDN.

These bitrates confirm my suspicion that the streams don't quite hit 720p HD quality, although they compare well to DVD quality.

We're letting the Indians win an important race.

No, I'm not talking about the "outsourcing" situation, which is simply an inevitable component of the current landscape when you have a population of well-educated engineers and call center workers in an economy where the prevailing wage is far more competitive than it is locally. As the Indian economy matures, the Indian services market (whether it's a C++ programmer or a call center operator) will begin to price itself out of the market, and those jobs will move to China, South America, and eventually Africa. Note to hopeful 3rd-world countries: follow India's lead and you too can witness the growth of a prosperous middle class...

Rather, I'm talking about some news this morning which indicates we're losing a race we should be in, that of space exploration. It appears somebody gets it in the Indian space administration, something that NASA has been unable to impress upon our current leadership. I'm talking about the harvesting of He3 from the moon.

In an article today, I was simultaneously excited (to hear the Indians are pursuing it) and chagrined (that it wasn't the US) to hear that India's mission to the moon has as a central focus, the prospect of mining He3.

Indian space scientists expect to map the lunar surface for the helium-3 (He-3) mineral to fuel nuclear power plants and frozen water as they make final preparations for India’s mission to the moon, expected to blast off next month.

Non-radioactive He-3 is scarce on earth but believed to be abundant on earth’s natural satellite and is seen as a promising fuel for advanced fusion reactors to generate power...

"The mission will help us locate He-3, which has the potential to produce a large amount of energy. It is expected that in a few years we can transport it from the moon to run nuclear plants and generate electricity," the director of the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) satellite centre T K Alex said.

"Probably 10 years from now fusion reactors which can use He-3 will be available. Our second mission to the moon, Chandrayaan-II, will also have a lunar lander and help us collect samples of the mineral."

"In the next 40 years, it will be possible to transport it to the earth," he said.

This is great news for humanity in general, because it means somebody is taking a leadership position for sustainable, non-polluting nuclear energy. It's bad news for the US, however, because it means that the Indians are beating us to the punch in harvesting He3 nuclear fuel.

Looks like John McCain doesn't know what he believes.

I guess if the fundamentals of the economy are strong, then you don't need government regulation:

Of course I don’t like excessive and unnecessary regu — uh, government regulation.

(John McCain on NBC's Today Show, Sept. 17th)

On the other hand, McCain's campaign also believes in strong regulatory oversight of Wall Street:

Do I believe in excess government regulation? Yes. But this patchwork quilt of regulating bodies was designed for the 1930s when they were invented.

(John McCain on CBS's Early Show, Sept. 17th)

Now surely, someone will point out, that just like "fundamentals" applies to people and ingenuity (ironically disingenuous), that you can believe in "excess government regulation" but simultaneously not "like" it.

Lest you think this inconsistency will bug Republicans, remember, this is the party that likes to call Universal Health Care "socialized medicine" but when it comes to bailing out Freddie, Fannie, and AIG, well that's not "socialized economics" that's prudent fiscal policy!

Who needs regulation when you can just let the market tank, and then bail it all out with taxpayer money?

Looking over the past few posts I've made, you might conclude that I'm a die hard Obamaniac.

While it's true I think Obama is going to be a huge improvement over Bush, and would make a substantially better president than McCain, and that he'll get my vote in November, he's less than the ideal candidate, nor is Biden.

Back in February 2007, I wrote about the "Bridge to Nowhere". I said:

I wanted to know, what rat bastards voted with Stevens to spend over $200M on a bridge to serve 50 people when that money could have been earmarked to rebuild bridges damaged by Katrina?

Well, the list isn't flattering. Sure you'll see Brownback, Frist, Hatch, Lott, and Santorum voting with Stevens-- and I suppose career politicians like Kennedy, Kerry, and Lieberman aren't too surprising either. But does it stop there? Sadly, no. Biden. Clinton. Dodd. Feinstein. Durbin. Harkin. Obama. All of them (sadly, Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell too!) voted against the amendment that Coburn put forth.

For the record, McCain did "Not Vote" on these bills (copout!).

Then again, in July, I wrote:

Barack Obama disappointed me when he recently voted for the "Telecom Immunity" package allowing for warrantless eavesdropping on US citizens.

While it's fairly likely that Obama will win in November, what if he doesn't? That should be the standard by which any legislation is judged-- not "what is the implication of this policy when used properly", but rather "what is the implication of this policy when intentionally abused?"

I will no longer actively participate in the Obama campaign, and I will no longer make quarterly donations to his campaign. Barring a more viable candidate joining the race, I'll still vote for Barack, but without the taste of kool-aid in my mouth.

So by these measures, I acknowledge that Obama and Biden fall short of the golden standard. Having said that, they have demonstrated substantially better judgement, poise, and collective experience than the competition.

Step 1: Register the domain IsSarahPalinQualifiedTo.Com (it's available!)
Step 2: Build a form where visitors can type in anything into a form field.
Step 3: When they click "Submit", send them here.

Here are a few questions I would put into the Palin Oracle:
Is Sarah Palin Qualified To... give you a root canal? Answer
Is Sarah Palin Qualified To... fly a 747? Answer
Is Sarah Palin Qualified To... operate a nuclear reactor? Answer
Is Sarah Palin Qualified To... perform your vasectomy? Answer
Is Sarah Palin Qualified To... teach differential calculus? Answer
Is Sarah Palin Qualified To... compile a kernel? Answer

You get the idea. (If you really get carried away you might try questions like "Balance the budget", or "Negotiate a Peace Treaty" or "Fix the economy" or "Reduce Teenage Pregnancy")

Have fun!

I've liked the Geico Cavemen commercials. Witty, edgy while conveying the message, "So easy, a caveman can do it."

But their "Tennis Match" ad featuring Billy Jean King just doesn't make sense. If you have to spend more than 30 seconds trying to figure out an ad, it's a failure. (I reject the premise that the ad worked because I'm sharing it with you... Unless of course, you're going to go out and buy Geico because I mentioned it just now).

Here's the ad in its entirety:

Here's the problem. All of the other cavemen ads are funny precisely because in the world of the cavemen, the Geico ads are atypically stereotypical-- meaning, the cavemen are intellectual members of modern society, and that Geico maligns them with their "so easy a caveman can do it" slogan. The cavemen resent being portrayed as, well, cavemen.

So, continuing this saga, we find ourselves at a tennis match between a caveman and Billy Jean King. (Clearly the context is to refer to the "Battle of the Sexes" match with Billy Jean King in which, again, a stereotype is shattered-- that a woman couldn't possibly defeat a man, but that's exactly what happened (in real life).)

So the dialog begins:
Caveman: I can't believe I've beating Billie Jean King
Billy Jean: You're not beating me, in fact you haven't even gotten a serve in.
Wait a sec, if cavemen aren't really stupid in the ad's reality, then they should be able to know whether they've scored a point, right?
Caveman: OK You might want to take a gander at the, uh, "scoreboard!"
Caveman: [Looking at the scoreboard himself] Whoa, what's with the Geico sign, Billy Jean?
Judge: They're sponsoring all of this.
Again, cavemen are smart in this reality, right? So how did he not notice all the signs?
Caveman: I get it. I quit!.... But I get it.
I guess what he "gets" is that Geico has basically hired Billy Jean King to take the cavemen down a notch, just like she did with male chauvinism? Except the cavemen aren't espousing chauvinism... They're espousing equality?!?
Caveman: [Finding a Geico sign on his chair] Oh, look.. it, it's hilarious...

It's disappointing to see such a clever campaign undermined by a poorly written, poorly executed, half-assed attempt at parlaying the "Battle of the Sexes" to some "Battle of the Species". It just doesn't work for me.

Maybe I missed something. Can someone explain this ad in the context of the message the other ads have conveyed? (While you're at it, maybe you can explain the lunacy of advertising that Gates and Seinfeld are engaged in?)

How stupid does John McCain think we are?

Compare this to what John McCain said about Hillary's health care plan:

Clearly Obama was referring to John McCain's policies. Never once was the word "Palin" uttered in Obama's entire clip. On McCain's clip, the reference to Hillary was in direct context.

Look, if the John McCain camp is going to make this fair game for false controversy, then it's more than fair game to raise the following three points:

• Did Obama ever call his wife a cunt? No. But, John McCain did. In the book "The Real McCain," Cliff Schecter writes "At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain's hair and said, 'You're getting a little thin up there.' McCain's face reddened, and he responded, 'At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt!'." His words, not mine.
• Did Obama ever disparage his opponents children or their gender? No. But, John McCain did. In 1998, McCain "joked", "Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Answer: Because her father is Janet Reno." Classy.
• Did Obama ever respond to a question referring to his opponent as a bitch? No. But, John McCain did. Last November, an audience member, referring to Hillary, asked "How do we beat the bitch?" McCain's response: "Excellent question." Who's the misogynist? Now that's a good question.

Then again, this is what you'd expect from a guy who said "I hate the gooks, and I will hate them for as long as I live...and you can quote me."

OK, John. That's exactly what we'll do.

My friend Rus blogged about an Icelandic band called Amiina, and one of their tracks, Hemipode (check out his blog for a listen) reminded me of one of my favorite soundtracks, the "Ravenous" soundtrack.

It's eerily atonal at times, and electronic at times, with bluegrass themes, and catchy choruses. You can listen to track samples at last.fm. True, some of the tracks sound like a Junior High band trying to warm up.

Others, however, such as Boyd's Journey, The Cave, Run, Manifest Destiny, and particularly the End Titles tracks fill a void in my musical repertoire like none other can. I love listening to Manifest Destiny in my car with the bass turned up really high. That's a track that needs to be felt to be experienced well.

One nice thing about modern technology is playlists. You can skip the uninspiring tracks (which probably fill a great purpose in the telling of the story of the movie-- this is a true soundtrack), and instead listen to music magic like Manifest Destiny.

My rating: (considering the playlist option to exclude uninteresting tracks) five stars.

Postscript: Manifest Destiny has, what I'd tonally call, what resembles a "dailing tone" or "busy signal" as one of its themes. Here are a few more songs that use that theme. Please submit any of your favorites that you think match.

• In the Meantime, by Spacehog (YouTube video -- by the way, Spacehog rocks)
• Vienna Calling (YouTube video -- by the way, Falco rocks too)
• Kraftwerk (YouTube video -- do I have to say it?)
• Pink Floyd - Young Lust/Empty Spaces Interlude (YouTube video, 4:55 in)
• The Penguin Cafe Orchestra - Telephone and Rubber Band (YouTube video - in case you thought you'd heard the Spacehog music before)

Ohio and North Dakota, according to Electoral-vote.com.

Ohio swapped from "Barely GOP" to "Barely Democratic" yesterday, putting Obama up 40 points over McCain in one fell swoop. Today, North Dakota joined Ohio, pushing Obama over 300 electoral votes, if the election is held today.

That's not all. Indiana with it's 11 votes just got more interesting. McCain's 5 point lead is now a 2 point lead.

In fact, the only significant gains that McCain made were, you guessed it, in Alaska.

Next stop Florida, then Indiana! I'm not ruling out a landslide at this point.

The hot video on YouTube right now is a MSNBC clip where republican talking heads Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy are caught thinking their mics are turned off during a commercial break:

Murphy: You know, because I come out of a blue, swing-state governor world. Engler, Whitman, Tommy Thompson, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, I mean... And these guys, this is all like how you win a Texas race, you know, just run it up. It's not going to work.
Noonan: It's over.
Murphy: Still, McCain can give a version of the Lieberman speech and do himself some good.
Chuck Todd: I think this was insulting to Kay Bailey Hutchinson ... She's never looked comfortable with this.
Murphy: They're all bummed out.
Todd: I mean, is she really the most qualified woman they could have turned to?
Noonan: The most qualified? No. I would think they went for the, excuse me, political bullshit about narratives....
Todd: Yeah, they went to narratives.
Noonan: Every time Republicans do that, because that's not where they live and it's not what they're good at, they blow it.
Murphy: You know what's really the worst thing about it? The greatness of McCain is no cynicism and this is cynical...
Todd: ...and gimmicky.

In a few seconds, they call it a cynical, calculated gimmick that's going to fail. By talking about Hutchinson, they're admitting that McCain had to pick a woman, which means they had a limited choice of who to select from, and considering they ended up with the social conservative Palin, means that the Rush factor (having to placate the ultra-conservatives) was what this was about.

With this kind of conservative discontent, I'll make another "bold" prediction. This election is going to be a blowout. Obama is going to easily surpass 300 electoral votes (just short of 350), and the only double digit states that McCain will carry will be Arizona (natch), Texas, Missouri, Indiana, Tennesee, North Carolina and Georgia. Maybe McCain will get Ohio, but I think Obama will get Florida.

From wikipedia, about the Democratic primaries:

The race for the 2008 presidential nomination began in earnest after the 2006 midterm elections. ...Eight major candidates opened their campaigns- Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich, Barack Obama, Bill Richardson, and Tom Vilsack- joining Mike Gravel, who had announced his candidacy in April 2006.
...

At the end of the year... Clinton held a substantial lead in superdelegates... However, Edwards and Obama remained close in state polls for the early contests, including the Iowa caucuses, where the final polling average had Obama leading narrowly, 31%, over Clinton, 30%, Edwards, 26%, Biden, 5%, and Richardson, 5%.

In other words, were some unfortunate tragedy to strike Obama, the Democrats would likely rally behind Clinton, Edwards, Biden and Richardson, in roughly that order. You might call them the "known quanities" of the democratic party. Given the contentious race between Clinton and Obama, and the recent scandal with Edwards, a choice of Biden or Richardson for VP would seem to be the natural choice for Obama, and one that the media nor the electorate would have any serious qualms about.

Given that Huckabee was the leading candidate on the Republican side, along with strong showings from Guiliani and Romney, how curious that the Republicans are rallying behind Palin, who, if she had run for President in the primaries would have been slaughtered.

Now perhaps there's the "contentious campaign" argument, where McCain couldn't have chosen Guiliani, Romney, or Huckabee. But now, I quote from electoral-vote.com:

For the first half of this year, whenever John McCain was asked what qualities he would look for in a potential Vice President he always said he wanted the most qualified person in the country to be available for the presidency should the need arise.

...who might he have chosen? The obvious pool is sitting Republican governors, of whom there are 22... An interesting question is then how does Sarah Palin rank in executive experience compared to the 21 eligible Republican governors... She ranks 17th.

... If we consider the pool of eligible Republican governors and Republican senators there are 59 who have more experience than she does... And of course, if the pool is expanded to include former Republican governors and senators and current and former Republican members of the House, the pool becomes several hundred and it is still likely that Palin would rank near the very bottom of the list in terms of experience.

If Obama had selected the 17th most experienced Democratic Governor as his VP pick, people would be asking a lot of tough questions of Obama like "Why the hell did he pick this complete unknown Governor from West Virginia?" and "What was Obama thinking, the guy's got scandals about the Sabo mine, and Nepotism involving his daughter." And yet, one week ago, most people didn't know Sarah Palin of Alaska from Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

Conclusion: Palin is not the most qualified candidate McCain could have picked, and by picking her, he demonstrates his questionable judgement and fitness for the office.

I swear, I'm going to stop as soon as the novelty of how astoundingly stupid a choice McCain made wears off...

The Washington Post reports that Palin Slashed Funding for Teen Moms.

The article states:

Earlier today the Associated Press reported that Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, opposed funding to prevent teen pregnancies, a position that Palin also took as governor. "The explicit sex-ed programs will not find my support," she wrote in a 2006 questionnaire distributed among gubernatorial candidates.

So let's put this all together. It seems Sarah Palin believes...

• You shouldn't fund sex-ed or birth control programs (presumably because abstinence works until marriage)
• If you get pregnant, you shouldn't have the right to choose, even in the case of rape or incest
• Should you get pregnant, despite the fact that the government stood in the way of programs that would have helped you avoid getting pregnant, and it stands in the way of your ability to make early term decisions about your pregnancy, and that you might be running away from a broken home where you were raped, you're on your own if you have no where to go with your child.

Is it ironic, or merely tragic, that her own daughter didn't know enough about birth control to use it, that even in a ultra-conservative household, abstinence didn't work?

How is it "compassionate" or "conservative" to pay lip service to the sanctity of human life and then with the stroke of a pen, and in the name of lower taxes (Jebus praise the almighty dollar!), strike down funding for programs that would assist that sanctified life once it's here and present?

If it's worth protecting in the womb, it's worth protecting once it's born, with health insurance, and social programs to help single mothers and their children get back on their feet!

To believe you possess some kind of clairvoyant ability to legislate morality, then subsequently stubbornly to ignore obvious evidence that dogma doesn't change human nature, and yet maintain that those who have fallen through the cracks you helped create don't deserve your help, smacks of something that can be classifed in the DSM-IV.

From time to time, I'm known to make some kind of outrageous prediction, and the one for today is Palin's resignation. Here are the top reasons I think that she'll either sink the McCain presidency, or have to step down:

Scandal Already the blogosphere is buzzing about a conflict of interest in her dismissal of a public safety commissioner, and the potential that her teenage daughter is the real mother of her latest child (mark that one up as top ten material for story of the decade if it's true)
UPDATE: Google News is reporting that Bristol Palin, 17 and unwed, is pregnant. So the scandals have already started. Sarah Palin portrays herself as a "tough as nails" conservative who can both run a governorship and raise a family, but apparently not well enough to reflect conservative social values like abstinence, and certainly not smart enough to use birth control. Of course, the hypocritical social conservatives will likely just give her a pass, but the onslaught has begun.

She's older than McCain Well not physically, there aren't many politicians alive that are older than John McCain, but philosophically, she's in the 19th century. She clings to the Republican dogma that global warming isn't caused by human factors (note to Palin: "An Inconvenient Truth" is out on DVD, even if you missed it on one of Juneau's 8 screens), and opposes abortion even in cases of incest and rape (Cue music: "Every sperm is sacred").

She's a major Flip-Flopper, not a "Maverick" Take her supposedly principled stand against the Senator Ted Stevens memorial bridge, aka "the bridge to nowhere". McCain's website claims, " She put a stop to the 'bridge to nowhere' that would have cost taxpayers $400 million dollars." Really? It turns out she was for it before she was against it.

She's not a principled fiscal conservative But, at least she cut $400 million in pork out of the federal budget, right? While it's true that as governor she nixed plans for the bridge that Palin's friend and supporter Ted Stevens petitioned congress for, what actually happened to the $400 million dollars that came out of your and my pocket? Was it returned to the Federal Government to help pay for Iraq, or to provide funding for No Child Left Behind, or to bury news from the EPA about global warming?

No, although that would have been yet another quaint use of our tax dollars... Instead, they used the funds for other transportation projects "because the money would otherwise have to be returned to the federal government." There goes the image of the principled fiscal conservative.

I've got more foreign policy experience than she does Seriously. Her spokeswoman states that she's been out of the US twice. Once on a trip to Ireland, and once to Germany and Kuwait. She supposedly got her first passport last year. It's so bad, the republicans are resorting to using the fact that right across the Bering Strait is Russia!

Russia, eh? The closest this could get to being "foreign policy experience" would be if a wayward Eskimo resident of Little Diomede Island (population 170) had wandered over to Russian territory on Big Diomede Island, and the Russians end up calling the Alaska Governor's office, if they hadn't called the State Department first. (read more about the Diomede Islands).

The largest two population centers over 10,000 residents in the vicinity are the Russian town of Anadyr (population 11K) and Fairbanks (population 31K). These two towns are over a thousand miles away. By equivalent logic, Barack Obama has foreign policy experience with Cuba since Marion, Illinois, a city of 27K residents and within his constituency, is about 1000 miles away from Havana, Cuba.

Experience Matters Here Barack Obama would be the second youngest President ever. McCain would be the oldest President ever, beating Reagan by 3 years. Actuarial tables show that Obama has less than one percent probability of death (by age) by the end of his second term. Compare this to McCain, who has a 6.8% probability of death. Mathematically, McCain is 8.5 times more likely to leave Palin as commander in chief than Obama is likely to leave Biden in the same position... Not to mention that Biden's foreign policy advantage over Palin will likely become evident during the vice presidential debates...

Let's face it, McCain's pick of Palin is the best evidence to question the fitness of his judgement, and her lack of experience given his age puts a fine point on it.