Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Palin's Subscriptions


Hilarious.

I laugh now.

20 years from now I will look back and shudder, then wait for my robot overlord to read me a magazine.

Posted by email from jromi's posterous

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Microbloggy


Haven't been 'macro' blogging much these days, as I've been consumed with exploring time-wasting appliances like Twitter, Ubiquity, Twinkle, Posterous, and the like. If I ever want to be on the Obama team, they will need to know about that Fight Club posting I made with regards to desiring Dick Cheney's participation.

Also want to see how Posterous handles this post, since it's coming from email. I hear that it renders a video-related URL (like YouTube) into a player. There's also some support for playing video and audio files. Soon everyone will be able to experience the song or comedy routine I'm listening to in the morning.

Too bad I don't have an available wi-fi network at work, else I'd leverage my iPhone's AirSharing app to serve up some rich content for the masses.

Here's a simple URL that takes you to a lovely experience of Patton Oswalt writing up his experience of trying one of his failure bowls.

And with an associated video URL

I'll have to test how it interprets mp3s later.

Do it internets. Make it happennnnnnnnnnow!

Posted by email from jromi's posterous

Friday, November 7, 2008

Plug for my aunt

My aunt's doing her bit to get a handle on emissions, and is now at a company that sells hardware for your car, so you can improve your fuel efficiency and reduce emissions. Apparently, you can even use these on your existing hybrid to make it an uber-hybrid.

Products are here. They are all of the Electronic Fuel Injection Enhancment family. Information on them are here.

The crazy adventures of Biblely!

Prop 8 passed, while folks in CA voted heavily for Obama. It was truly ironic that much of the support came from Black and Latino voters, who have the unpleasant historical experience of having their civil rights restricted by the state because of the color of their skin.

Huh?

Morford has an excellent commentary on it, that about sums up the reason why it failed. Of course

Excerpts:
Some say the inglorious success of Prop. 8, the brutally regressive measure that removes the rights of very specific people who love very specific other people from ever marrying them, can be blamed on multiple factors.
...
Or maybe it's all those sad, white, central portions of the state, the huge chunks of voters who live in places without much culture or perspective or major universities, who only hear certain strains of spiteful rhetoric and thin fearmongering, whose general lack of education means they apparently still believe certain flavors of love will poison everyone's soup and ruin the sanctity of the time-honored 50-percent heterosexual missionary position Christian divorce rate.
...
[...]I think the real blame lies with, well, the Almighty himself.
...
Behind it all, it's God. No, not the god you and I understand as a universal, non-gendered, asexual, love-drunk energy coursing through all things at all times everywhere without the slightest wisp of prejudice or geographical preference, but that famously small, myopic version, the one that encourages a literalist interpretation of very carefully selected Bible verse (to the complete disregard of myriad others) -- a version that, in short, has been drilled into the consciousness of far too many voters for far too long.

Is it not true? Once again this election, in pulpits across America, the call rang out: We must stop the gays. We cannot allow them entry into the sanctuary of Eternal Hetero Love. After all, marriage is (these people believe) the last upstanding Christian stronghold, the final barrier preventing America from becoming some sort of Sodom-iffic nipple-pierced polyamorous rave party where anyone can marry anything and pets are running scared and people stick parts of their bodies into other people's parts for sexual pleasure. The horror.
My take on it: restricting civil rights using a simple majority vote is un-American. That, and the simple fact that nothing is removed or lessened for heterosexual relationships should gay people marry.

What would Mr. Show do?

Or Senator Tankerbell? You gotta watch it to get the Bibley reference.

Fanboys: Harry Knowles is kicking Window's ass

Extreme Star Wars dork pleasure, or failed montage of sci-fi heroes? Darth Vader would no doubt find my lack of faith disturbing.

I can almost see Shatner's ego greedily chomping at the margins of the film.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

We're all growns up, and have lots of work ahead

We Baracked the vote. We are a better nation for it.

Here's some commentary on the GOP and its future:
Conservatives also must decide whether a return to their core economic beliefs will be accompanied by a hard right turn on social issues such as gay rights, guns and abortion. Some feel that Sen. John McCain wasn't conservative enough socially.

Regardless, for Republicans to rebound, they must catch up to Democrats in online organizing and fundraising - a shortcoming made clear in this election.

"The Republican Party is teetering on the brink of irrelevancy," said Professor Lawrence R. Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota. "This is about as close to a repudiation as you can get."

What will follow, Jacobs said, "will be a period of bloodletting in the Republican Party. It's going to be a free-for-all, professional wrestling battle royal."
...
Dick Armey of Texas knows what it is like to revive the Republican Party. A former majority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, Armey was one of the leaders of the 1994 "Republican revolution" that seized Capitol Hill after two years of a Democratically controlled Congress and White House.

"They need to get back to what worked in the past," said Armey. "We should start by asking ourselves, 'What were we doing when people loved us?' And it's been a long time since some people in this country loved us."
...
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's future appears mixed. Armey said, "It's hard for me to tell where she will fit in." Franc said, "She's the young athlete who makes it to the big leagues who has 'lots of upside.' " Hawkins called her "a rock star."

Jacobs said: "There's been a lot of hyperventilating about her. But once cooler heads look back on her, she will be seen as destructive to the ticket and more abysmal than (former Vice President Dan) Quayle. There has never been a vice presidential candidate as unpopular as Sarah Palin.'"
GOP has 8 years of Bush to thank for lost love. Even now, Bushco is working on getting his final nail in the coffin with deregulatory measures.
The White House is working to enact a wide array of federal regulations, many of which would weaken government rules aimed at protecting consumers and the environment, before President Bush leaves office in January.
The new rules would be among the most controversial deregulatory steps of the Bush era and could be difficult for his successor to undo. Some would ease or lift constraints on private industry, including power plants, mines and farms.
Those and other regulations would help clear obstacles to some commercial ocean-fishing activities, ease controls on emissions of pollutants that contribute to global warming, relax drinking-water standards and lift a key restriction on mountaintop coal mining.
Once such rules take effect, they typically can be undone only through a laborious new regulatory proceeding, including lengthy periods of public comment, drafting and mandated reanalysis.
...
Bush's aides are acutely aware of the political risks of completing their regulatory work too late. On the afternoon of Bush's inauguration, Jan. 20, 2001, his chief of staff issued a government-wide memo that blocked the completion or implementation of regulations drafted in the waning days of the Clinton administration that had not yet taken legal effect.
...
"Through the end of the Clinton administration, we were working like crazy to get as many regulations out as possible," said Donald R. Arbuckle, who retired in 2006 after 25 years as an OMB official. "Then on Sunday, the day after the inauguration, OMB Director Mitch Daniels called me in and said, 'Let's pull back as many of these as we can.' "
...
Clinton's appointees wound up paying a heavy price for procrastination. Bush's team was able to withdraw 254 regulations that covered such matters as drug and airline safety, immigration and indoor air pollutants. After further review, many of the proposals were modified to reflect Republican policy ideals or scrapped altogether.
So lots to do in the coming years. At least we can send Palin back to the Fortress of Solitude where her and her husband can resume building momentum to support the secession of Alaska from the US. Maybe Russia will take them.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

2008 Presidential Election Day

 
So excited. I've been waiting 8 years for this day. It's like Christmas, Thanksgiving, Hannukah, Kwanzaa, Chinese New Year, and the release day of every video game I've ever wanted. It's time to undumben the Presidential office, and all afflicted institutions.
Thanks to rosstralia for the wonderful Lego Obama clip.

The only thing I will miss about the GOP will be the consistent behavior so fecund for fodder. What will Tina Fey do now, other than make hit TV shows? Will John Stewart still have a job? Will running in a political office still be an attractive lampoon mechanism for Stephen Colbert? Let's wait and see.

On the rare chance that McCain gets elected, I have only this to say: please don't die.