Munenori

... and they're pushing to get their out-of-country buddies in on the action too?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/09/AR2008110902155_pf.html

Why isn't this on the front page of most major news outlets?

OK, this kind of demagoguery just pisses me off:

"McCain suggests Obama tax policies are socialist"

How stupid does McCain's staff think the voting public is? We just socialized half of our banking system (the risk/loss bit), and most of the Congress supported that as an absolute necessity. You're pitching a socialized mortgage loan system daily. Sorry, Johnnymac, you lost any weight you might have put behind 'socialized' anything as political campaign rhetoric.

Ditch campaigning. Draft the President, the Cabinet, and Congress. Or else give up the pretenses and declare as the Oligarchy Party.

/mutter

The creator of XKCD is one of the truly underappreciated comic minds of our age.  I submit for your consideration:

Nash

Oh, to have been brilliant and funny...  8-)  I'm thinking I'll have to bump "Six Easy Pieces" back up to the next slot in my reading list, after I finish "Cryptonomicon."

You know, I'm just too tired to even look that up. Maybe it's a word, maybe I'll just add it to my list of fabrication project for the day...

Anyway.

I was listening to NPR on the way home, taking in some "news analysis" of McCain's and Obama's "plans" for cutting taxes. Thus the subject of my post. Why is is that we can't have someone (a) running for office, and (b) taken seriously, who will actually talk about real ways to deal with government revenue and spending?

Get some cojones. Assemble a workable tax plan (I know you can find a supra-genius who can spell FLAT TAX) and go to town. Deficit spending is for dumbasses.

I'm just sitting here, listening to the rain fall (gently for once). I'll have to go check the water level in the rain barrel to make sure it hasn't overflowed.  :)

XKCD rocks.

(Disclaimer: I'm posting from work. It's my lunch break. Sue me.)
So I decided on Saturday, after a disappointing session of EQ2, that I needed to take a break from the game. I had already decided that I needed a break from SCA things... though admittedly, probably a brief one.

My break consisted of digging up the rock-filled soil in my back yard and sieving it in a cheap knockoff double-wide milk crate, laying a dry brick pedestal for our rain barrel, and shoveling up the decomposing maple buds alongside my garage. That and reading some of Iasmin's copy of 'Charlemagne's Tablecloth," playing with Leelu, and finding a new air filter for the furnace/AC in hopes of getting it working again.

I often think, during such times, about a scene from the denouement of "The Return of the King," when Frodo talks about trying to return to his old life - his normal life - upon returning home from the War of the Ring. I wonder about what value and meaning life holds in the absence of such an all-encompassing task; sometimes, I wonder about what meaning life could have if that were its entire scope. I suppose it's fodder for some more reading. Ultimately, I don't think I could find any intellectual or emotional satisfaction in nihilism.

Sometimes, I think I would've been a lot happier with a 110 IQ.

http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=162

The Dymaxion Car. I think I need to carve a nerf bat to look like one of these on a stick, and go use it to pummel the design and engineering chiefs at pretty much every major car maker.

It had to happen sooner or later... my brain is full. Time to dump some stuff to near-line storage.  8-)