Nowhere-Fast.net

It seems that those braniacs over at MIT have figured out how to make solar panels produce power 24 hours a day.  That’s a good thing.  Now we just need to up the efficiency on that, tidal power and wind power and we might be able to consider someday starting to make a dent in our energy problems.

Until then - build some damned nuclear reactors and start selling electric cars!!!

I’m beginning to reach a point where I don’t want to vote for either Obama or McCain because I just don’t want to associate myself with the supporters of either candidate.  Really, I have only a handful of problems with either of them as candidates, but I cannot stand the endless stream of bullshit dropping from the fevered mouths of McCainiacs and Obamanauts.

Every time I read a mindless rant against one of the candidates or hear an idiotic sound byte repeated ad nauseum by political drones or see a juvenile bumper sticker, poster or lawn ornament I immediately recoil from the moron of the moment’s governmental drug of choice.  It’s disgust by association and our 24/7 news networks coupled with my affinity for internet political news is sending me into a downward spiral of political despair.

When I actually think about what I’m feeling I realize that my concern can be summed up in a simple phrase.  “That’s the type of person who’s going to choose the leader of the free world?”  Barrack Obama could unveil the most lucid, pragmatic and effective foreign policy plan in decades and there would be morons en masse who still insist and claiming that he’s an anti-American “secret Muslim” who’s out to destroy our way of life.  Similarly, John McCain could develop a sustainable, rational and forward thinking domestic policy and energy plan but Democrats around the country would continue to decry a vote for him as a vote for a third Bush term.

The cunning minds at MSNBC have realized that if Obama wins the election and broadly continues current US policy - which he would, were he elected - the very same Europeans who welcomed him in such numbers recently would be unhappy.

The cult of personality that has swept the vocal European left rabidly favors Obama over McCain even though Obama’s economic position would be detrimental to Europe.  The firmly held belief that Obama would usher in a new era in American society is completely false and I can only imagine that it’s based on an utter misunderstanding of not only how the American government actually works but of America in general.

There’s a lot more to say about this and when I’m not sick I’ll type it up.

Also, to be fair the article wasn’t an AP article reprinted by MSNBC, so I should have made fun of the AP in that first article.  Of course, the AP makes a habit of running stories about the blindingly obvious, so anything I said would have been redundant.

Obama’s week long international trip is over and, as an undecided voter, I’m annoyed.  Whether or not you would consider this past week a “success” for Obama depends entirely on the metrics you use.  Personally, after his trip I have no more confidence in his ability to be president.  I am thoroughly convinced, though, of his ability to establish an effective photo-op.

The precise media management and coverage of the trip to present an image of a presidential Obama was stunningly impressive but nothing about the content of his trip inspires any confidence in me regarding his actual abilities.

McCain, on the other hand, completely wasted an opportunity to stand out on domestic issues through well orchestrated, well rehearsed and broad public engagements.

I do think that both of these men could make a good president but they have opposing problems.  McCain would have been a fantastic president eight years ago - possibly one of our best.  Similarly, Obama could be a great president a dozen or so years from now.  As it is, though, neither man is, in my opinion, where they need to be.

The other day I was thinking about the future of cars and the fairly recent push towards hybrids.  It’s a little frustrating because hybrids are not the future.  Neither are flex-fuel vehicles or, clearly, gasoline engines.  I would go so far as to say that internal combustion engines are going to be obsolete for commuters very quickly.  What you’re going to have in the future, probably the near future, is electric cars.

It’s the only option that really makes sense in the grand scheme of things.  It will always be more efficient to produce large amounts of energy and distribute it compared to producing small amounts of application-specific energy.  Storing and releasing that energy is going to be the next major boom industry.

Personally, I would love to have a garage full of electric vehicles - so long as they can perform as well, or nearly so, as current vehicles.

There were a few more serious things that I was going to talk about today, but instead I’ll just post a link to misspelled tattoos.

I have to remember to not go to the Internet Movie Database after watching, and enjoying, a movie.  Two things happen on that site - first, it sucks enjoyment from any film.  Second, it completely destroys any faith you had in humanity.

I finally watched Babel tonight and was very impressed.  It’s a good movie with some touching and effective if not particularly complex themes.  The themes are so simple to describe (yet universal which is what makes the film so effective) that the title sums them up completely.  A quick trip to the IMDB forums, though, reveals legions of people who seem to be completely unable to figure it out.  It’s paramount to someone walking out of “Death Machine” and wondering if it was a bout a machine that killed people.

I really must believe that there is a subset of people who post heavily on internet forums and web pages who have more time then intelligence.  There must be a select few who make snap judgements unguided by rational thought and then feel compelled to share those thoughts with the rest of the world.  Something in those same people seems to require them to belittle anyone who disagrees.  It must be a small subset, though, because if there really were as many raving, ranting maniacs as the IMDB would lead me to believe then there would be no IMDB because the most advanced technology would be a somewhat less then dull stick.

Yesterday was a special day for my good friends Chuck and Heather.  Their baby daughter, Amelia Ann McAuley, was born at 11:30 pm on July 23rd.  Congratulations guys!

To anyone who tried to access the page yesterday - there were some database problems on my provider’s end of things so the page was down most of the day.

When I was a kid I can distinctly remember the first episode of the X-Files.  I can remember it so vividly because I bought into the marketing hype completely and was painfully excited to watch the show, but I missed it.  For whatever reason it was beyond my 13 year old capacity to get in front of a TV that was showing the X-Files when the pilot aired.  The next day as some friends and I rode our bikes down a long, rural road to our town’s tiny country store I was informed of the various goings-on of Mulder and Scully’s first assignment and an interesting thought occurred to me.  I decided, then and there, that I didn’t want to watch the next episode until I had seen the first.

To this day I have never seen the first episode of the X-Files and, consequently, have seen only very few subsequent episodes and those only in passing.  Now that this new movie’s coming out, though, I find myself drawn towards the show again and I am suddenly actually considering sitting through nine episodes worth of paranormal FBI investigations plus one movie in order to be prepared for this new showing.  I don’t think that this is a good idea.  I could probably live out the remainder of my life in peace having never “gotten into” the X-Files - but I’m whenever I see those damned commercials - and they’re not very good as far as movie trailers go - I’m 13 again and pissed off that I missed the pilot.

Here’s a picture of a Fox News poll asking “What is the most biased news outlet in America?”  To paraphrase an old proverb, this is the pot asking which appliance is the most black.

Things to note in the picture: first, Fox News is not an option for the “most biased news outlet.”  Second, the poll is being presented as a part of the O’Reilly Factor web page.  The frightening part is that there is a large viewership who will go to this page, see this poll and honestly believe that Fox News and O’Reilly are unbiased and that the classic liberal media boogy-men presented as poll options are the real media evil.

Every media outlet is biased - it’s the nature of the beast.  The modern 24/7 networks are divided into two types of coverage.  There’s the daily coverage, which is basically a newsfeed, and there’s the prime time coverage, which is dominated by personalities.  All of the personalities are biased to some degree or another, but many of the networks do a reasonable job keeping their daily coverage fair.  The one that fails epicly on both counts, though, is Fox News.  Now the most biased show on the most biased network is asking who’s the most biased news outlet - it’s funny.