Lee.org

Redbull had a soap box derby a couple weeks ago on Dolores in front of Dolores Park. I walked over with Rick.

It was fun :-)

That soap box car was a boat-thing. About 5 seconds after I snapped this image, the car bumped into a hay bale and the thing frickin SHATTERED into a milltion pieces. It was a wonder to behold!

Watch this

Yes, the source material The Daily Show used from Fox News is real. Here is the original Fox News broadcast on Youtube:

(local archive)

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

It is a discussion with Fox News Chief Carl Cameron and Bill O’Reilly (Daily Show quotes begin at about 40 seconds)

It’s a bit insane that Bill O’Reilly would try to defend a Vice Presidential candidate that, to his knowledge, could not name all of the countries in North America. O’Reilly said (starting at 1:53 in the video) “You can tutor people and you can get people up to speed on the basics… here’s the government, here’s the exceptionalism that we’re talking about, here’s the world map…”  

Umm, he’s trying to defend a VP candidate that, to his knowledge, doesn’t know how many countries are in North America. I’m sorry, that’s just not defensible. It’s fine to challenge the veracity of the claim but, I’m sorry, if it’s true that she can’t name the countries are in North America (that would be, the US, Canada and Mexico), then she shouldn’t be defended. So why is he defending her in this situation? That’s the question.

Note that I’m critisizing a couple things here: First, that Palin isn’t qualified (which might not be the case, the claims of her lack of knowledge isn’t entirely proven). Second, that O’Reilly would use the defense that he did, saying that it’s OK if she didn’t have the knowledge. And then of course there’s the whole media cover-up which was humorously hightlighted by the Daily Show.

Jon Stewart, “Why are we just hearing about this now?”

Fox News Chief Carl Cameron,  “Well, I wish I could have told you back at the time  but all of it was put off the record until after the election.”

Yipe. That’s not very Fair or Balanced.

Update 11-14-08: Some/most/all? of the digging of Palin are unfounded. The leaks about Palin not knowing about Africa and possibly other items were faked by a person going by the name of  Martin Eisenstadt. Google for him and his issues. My commentary about O’Reilly and Fox News stand firm.

I know that in high school and through my early 20s I held my stress in my throat. When I’d get stressed, when I had to do something nerve-wracking, My vocal cords and neck would get tight. My voice would get tired quickly under stressful conditions (like public speaking, pthaw).

Later, I recall holding quite a bit of my stress in my shoulders. Right in the spot between my shoulder blades would tighten.

This week I had some stress and it manifested in mid-back pain. About 8 inches below the spot between my shoulder blades. A very sharp nerve pain between two vertebra. I sat down to put my shoes on, slipped my right shoe partially on, crossed my right leg over my left, put my left index finger in the heal of my right shoe to slip the heal in and when I applied a little pulling force, that spot between my vertebra screamed. It was like the (very slight) sheering force was going to tear me apart.

I sat upright and held there for a minute, staring at my shoes, wondering how the hell I was going to get them on. Joy.

I resolved to gently work through the pain. The shoes went on and I went out.

My folks got me one of these when I was a kid. It was wonderful. The Walgreens down the street is selling this, the original Popeil Pocket Fisherman.

Ron Popeil, you are in my pantheon.

I heard this podcast the other day. It was a famous movie producer. He laid down this amazing piece of story telling wisdom in the middle of the interview. I wish I could recall the speakers in he interview. I recall that the producer had made movies of the ilk of Indiana Jones, though it’s not Steven Spielberg being interviewed.

Interviewer asking: So it’s all about, I mean for the audience you’re suggesting it’s this hunger to know what’s going on and why it’s happened.

Producer: No. It’s a hunger, that’s a very good word, to know what’s going to happen next. So we ask what’s going on in order to… that’s the only reason what’s going on. What we’re saying is in effect, “What am I rooting for?” That’s all we ever want to know.

I was the Inspector at Precinct 2006 in Visitacion Valley yesterday. I had 4 clerks to help me. It was good. The quiet, reverent sound of voting is 1 part library, 1 part church. And like both of those, when it gets really quiet in the middle of the day, your eyelids can get pretty heavy.

We had about 250 people over the course of the day. About 1/2 before 10am but it was a steady slow stream all day.

The biggest excitement was when I realized at 6pm that the steps up to the polling place were poorly lit. A bit of scrambling around and turning on lights inside the building (the exterior lights, we found are on a timer) remedied that.

Oh, and at one point, the ballot machine, called the “Optech Insight” stopped making the happy noise when ballots where inserted. Instead of “da-dum da-dum!” It would go “da-dum!” or “da!”. I called in and they said as long as the numbers on the front keep incrementing, it’s all good. I rebooted the ballot machine and it and it started making happy noises again.

There were a few people that had trouble with the machines, voting for 3 presidents and wondering why the machine kicked back their ballot. A calm voice and patient explaining got everyone through without a single real problem.

At the training class last week, I remember cringing and mouthing “Oh my god!” when someone asked if White-Out was ok to use on a ballot because that’s what she had been given when she had made a mistake on her ballot. The teacher kept her cool and calmly explained that Inspectors should give them a new ballot instead of using White-Out.

And I got this nifty pin :-)

My FED ([something] Election Deputy) was great, very helpful when I had questions. I called the Election Hotline a few times with questions and they knew their stuff. The pickups were funny… the first pickup, for the “important” electronic voting information was carried out by these cops that looked like… well they had all the cool cop equipment. On one officer I counted about 6 magazine holders and a utility belt that rivaled Batman’s. He was all shiny and “officery”. I got a glimpse at the grip of his pistol and man, did it shine! The second pickup was for all the paper ballots… 200 pounds of paper. These two officers were 8 inches shorter than the first-pickup guys. They had a more “down to earth” feel. Although I’m sure that bullets from any of these cops guns would stop bad guys, I’m sure that the first-pickup officers simply wouldn’t have to draw their guns as often since their appearance forcefully puts forth an “I am in charge” vibe. Interesting.

And to make the image of the second officers complete, since they had to haul so much paper, they drove a mini-van.

You know those myriad science fiction stories with rocket ships flying around…

It won’t be science fiction forever.

This is so exciting!

http://space.xprize.org/lunar-lander-challenge

Even better to watch the videos in high quality  here  and here.

Zimbabwe has  231,000,000% inflation.

The wikipedia article on the  Zimbabwean dollar reads like a Keystone Cops comedy.

A Reuters article reads “The country’s largest bank note, a 100 billion Zimbabwe dollar bill introduced on Monday, cannot buy a loaf of bread…”

On July 24th 2008, a “Second” 100 billion ZWD note could buy 3 eggs.

Of course since then the currency was devalued by 8 decimal places. And continuing inflation has moved things along another 6 decimal places. Their currency has been devalued a couple times.

A little quick math (that’s probably wrong, I’m no wiz at such things) tells me that 1 US Dollar could buy  32,145,960,000,000,000,000,000 (yes, 3.2 x 10^24) “First” Zimbabwean dollars from back in 1983.

(that number calculated from here. Here’s the ratios: First ZWD:Second ZWD = 500,000:650. Second ZWD:Third ZWD = 758,000,000,000:1,780. Third ZWD:current US dollar = 98,300,000,000:1)

Thanks for the pointer Trav and thanks for providing my RDA of absurdism Mr. Mugabe.

update 11-2-08: Hey would you look at that. Someone on Wikipedia made a chart  for the most part agreeing with my 3.2×10^24 estimate. :-)

update 11-13-08:

Take a look at this screenshot I took of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe  I took today.

First, ask yourself how you would pronounce the word “Wiktionary”.  Ok, now proceed.

In April I commented in the Wiktionary wiki about…. well, I’ll let you read:

(archive)

There is quite a  consensus  that the pronunciation for “Wiktionary” in the logo of this site is not definitive. Why then is this contentious pronunciation displayed on every page of the site? A look through the archives of the  discussion rooms,  FAQ  and  entry discussion  shows that the issue appears time after time without any resolution. This has caused me to lose faith in the process Wiktionary’s Administration uses to agree on subjects. Since I cannot trust Wiktionary, I will not be using Wiktionary. For the betterment of all, I hope this issue is resolved. I will check back in 6 months. —Gadlen  22:58, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

The responses were… well, less than compelling.

Apparently everyone is perfectly happy that the logo of this wordie website is an incorrect pronunciation of the name of the site.

Feh.

Sure, encyclopedias are more exciting than dictionaries but it’s interesting to compare the popularity of the two sites…

wikipedia  Active users  157,889

wiktionary  Active users 995

For posterity, here is the rest of the discussion from above:

Continue reading ‘How to Pronounce “Wiktionary”’ »