Bits: Wildflower Decapitation Edition

Awesome.

-A video from a random episode of the old Batman series has been making the rounds of the YouTubes because it appears to offer commentary on the 2008 election... 40 years in advance. There are several parallels that can be seen in this clip alone, which features Batman and the Penguin engaging in a debate prior to an election for Mayor of Gotham City. Of course, this campaign has become such a caricature of itself that it's no wonder it reminds people of a campy 60s TV series.



-Unsettlingly, anecdotal evidence increasingly suggests that early voting sites across the country are being targeted by angry protestors, specifically anti-Obama protestors. This article describes an incident in North Carolina, and features video. So... you're protesting voting? Why not protest Obama by going into the early voting place and voting against him? And I especially like the comment that "Sundays are for church, not for voting"... by the person who's spending her Sunday protesting instead of in church.



-All over the news today... the discovery on the Arizona/Utah border (within Vermillion Cliffs National Monument) of what is being termed a "Dinosaur Dance Floor." How did it get this name? To quote Newswise.com:

“Get out there and try stepping in their footsteps, and you feel like you are
playing the game ‘Dance Dance Revolution’ that teenagers dance on,” says
Marjorie Chan, professor and chair of geology and geophysics at the University
of Utah. “This kind of reminded me of that – a dinosaur dance floor – because
there are so many tracks and a variety of different tracks.”

The find apparently includes thousands of dinosaur tracks in a very small area, in some places a dozen per square yard. There are least four different species represented. The scientists are theorizing that the tracks were formed at an oasis in what that time was a huge area of sand dunes, larger than today's Sahara. I have to throw in one more quote here:

Seiler envisions the dinosaurs were “happy to be at this place, having wandered
up and down many a sand dune, exhausted from the heat and the blowing sand,
relieved and happy to come to a place where there was water.”

Ah, yes, poetical scientists.



-Rather interesting news from Switzerland today, a nation always on the cutting edge when it comes to government. A new law bans the humiliation of plants. Recently, the Swiss Parliament asked a special committee of philosophers, lawyers, geneticists, and theologians to determine the meaning of dignity as it pertains to plants. They have issued their report, which says that it is morally wrong to participate in "the decapitation of wildflowers at the roadside without rational reason", and it appears that parliament is acting on those guidelines. However, one wonders what the actual extent and/or enforceability of such a law would be. More here.



-Free TV On the Internet: Check out this past week's new Family Guy episode, "The Road to Germany". It's already infamous because it has Nazis wearing McCain/Palin buttons, which seems like an unlikely thing to have fixated upon in an episode that revolves around a port-a-potty time machine (which I suppose makes as much sense as a phone box) and a baby dressing up as Hitler.

Bits: Epic Fail Edition

-MemeWatch is spreading! I was seriously considering doing an installment of our favorite feature about the sudden mainstream acceptance of the netspeak "Fail." But Slate beat me to the punch, with this great article.

-Former Bush Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama this morning on NBC's Meet the Press. If nothing else, this should help Obama win the news cycle and allow him to continue to keep his lead.

-McCain spokeswoman Nancy Pfotenhauer stood by remarks this week that McCain is winning in the "real Virginia." Apparently this means the more southern parts of Virginia that aren't suburbs of Washington D.C. I'm sure this will help them win over voters in Falls Church and Arlington.

-This comes after Gov. Sarah Palin, while campaigning in Greensboro, North Carolina this week, saying she enjoyed coming to "pro-american parts of the country." Of course, Barack Obama's campaign immediately began asking "so, which parts of the country are anti-american?" And the Republicans have run into a problem trying to make talking points out of this stuff. Rep. Michele Bachmann caused a stir when she attempted to defend Palin on MSNBC's Hardball and ended up calling for an investigation into which members of Congress were "unamerican." McCarthy, anybody? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/17/gop-rep-channels-mccarthy_n_135735.html

-In more positive(?) Sarah Palin news, she appeared last night on Saturday Night Live and didn't really do much. Most thought this would put the spotlight on Tina Fey's Palin impersonation, but it was Fey's sometime partner-in-crime, the very pregnant Amy Poehler, who stole the show during Gov. Palin's appearance on the "Weekend Update" segment. Check this out: http://www.hulu.com/watch/39808/saturday-night-live-update-palin-rap

-Today's Free TV on the Internet: You read my review of the Crusoe pilot, "Rum and Gunpowder." Now watch it for yourself: http://www.hulu.com/watch/39786/crusoe-rum-and-gunpowder

MemeWatch: Republican Rage

Nearly every news outlet (except, of course, for FoxNews, which seems to be pre-occupied with the fact that Sarah Palin's face is too wrinkly on the latest cover of Newsweek) has run a story in the past few days about the rising level of anger at McCain campaign rallies. The McCain campaign has always had him asking things like "Who is the real Barack Obama?" but lately when the Senators pulls out that line he's been met with angry screams of "traitor," "terrorist," and even "kill him!" When he takes questions from the audience, as he often does, they have mostly turned into supporter after supporter begging him to "take it to" Obama. With Obama pulling away in the polls, the raw nerves of the Republican base are exposed, and they're showing up on primetime network news.

So, is all this overblown? And where is it coming from? Well, the answer to the first question is both "yes" and "no." Helpful, huh? The McCain campaign has no control over the fact that they're going to attract some crazies (just as Obama has no control over the far left's support). This is a situation that some on the right thought would never occur again, that they had built a permanent majority, so there's a level of anger. And it's true that Obama's a true liberal, something that hasn't been successful on the national stage since JFK, (I would argue that we've had several true conservatives) so that has led to the usual (in my opinion outdated) charges of "socialism." And that's fair game. If they want to talk about how "liberal," Obama is, as they did with Gore and Kerry, that's fine. And this is, of course, nothing new. Republicans did their best to imply that John Kerry was French because he liked windsurfing. I can't make something like that up.

The problem is two-fold. The tone with Kerry and Gore was more mocking (chants of "flip-flop, flip-flop"), but now it seems more like an angry mob, who if pointed in the right direction would be ready with a rope and tree branch. That may sound extreme, but I didn't make it up. It's being implied and outright stated across the left two thirds of the media spectrum, from Chris Matthews to David Gergen. And because Obama is Black, it adds a racial tinge to some of this stuff. The other issue is that people weren't seeing McCain and/or Palin doing anything about it. When you hear one of your supporters yell "kill him," about your opponent, something needs to be done about that. McCain started to do that a little yesterday, assuring a woman in his crowd that there was no need to be scared of the idea of Obama as president (after she said "I hear he's an arab."), but it should have been reflexive, and it obviously wasn't.

There is the perception that at least some of this has come from the official mouthpieces of the McCain campaign, which is interesting because it's a new twist (Bush denied all links to "Swiftboat Veterans for Truth"). They're running official ads about Bill Ayers, the Chicago politician, and Palin actually said in Florida this week that Obama "thinks this country is so imperfect that he's palling around with terrorists." McCain's campaign has openly said that they're going negative in response to falling poll numbers. So it's a difference of source from previous years.

Here's a question that may or may not be relevant... will it work? I doubt it, and I'm normally a believer in the power of negative advertising. The Bill Ayers business doesn't hold up under any sort of scrutiny, and all it takes is a one sentence explanation ("So... you're blaming me for something that an acquaintance I hadn't met yet did when I was eight?") to make the Republicans look like they're making something out of nothing (which, of course, they are). Perhaps more importantly, the economy is such an overwhelming issue at this point that it's hard to take anything else seriously. And, as someone said on MSNBC's Hardball yesterday, "Most Americans today think the Weather Underground was a rock band fronted by Lou Reed."

I don't mean this as a partisan screed. McCain has tried to calm things down a little in the past few days, though it's mostly resulted in him appearing to be at odds with his base. Lately he's spending a lot of time looking surprised at how bad things have gotten. And this meme only hurts his campaign, no matter what they did to cause it. In any case, don't take my word for it. Here are articles from the past day or so from CNN, Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/10/obama-called-traitor-agai_n_133613.html), Talking Points Memo (http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/10/bomb_obama.php), New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/11/us/politics/11campaign.html?_r=1&ref=politics&oref=slogin) Yahoo! (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081011/ap_on_el_pr/mccain_42;_ylt=Ak4Do42TCidwdG1eix_J5IJh24cA), and Salon.com (http://www.salon.com/opinion/walsh/?last_story=/opinion/walsh/election_2008/2008/10/11/current_mccainsdishonest/).

Enjoy.

Bits: Sheep Tasering Edition

I'm going for fun stuff today... it's too serious around here!

-I had bus drivers who wish they thought of this. Apparently a bus driver in Florida stopped their school bus on the train tracks and told the kids that unless they started behaving they would just leave them there to get run over. Hey, it falls under my definition of "fun stuff," okay?

-Controversy has developed in Australia after police tasered a sheep that was blocking traffic. I have trouble believing the sheep was enough of a threat to warrant such treatment (Hey, police officers around the world, you're not supposed to taser somebody unless they're getting violent. 'Cause I think everybody must have been out sick that day), but you have to admit, the whole thing's hysterical. I only wish there was video.

-British supermarket chain Asda, owned by none other than Walmart (shocker!) is now selling beer for cheaper than water. The article seems to imply that this means that beer is too cheap... I would read it as water being way too expensive. I'll try not to go on my rant here about the stupidity of bottled water. I remember a comedian I saw on television once, who did a bit about bottled water: "I don't want the water that comes out of the tap for free. I want to forage for water, like my ancestors did."

-The admittedly biased Huffington Post has an article about how Gov. Sarah Palin said that women who don't vote for another woman are going to hell. Because you know they totally are. Cooties hell. Or Wisteria Lane, maybe.

-I'm sorry, South Park's season premiere is on now. Cartman: "What is wrong with you, Butters? Defeating the Chinese won't mean anything if we do it by going around shooting people in the dick! Goddammit!"

-Today's Free TV on the Internet: I confess I haven't been paying that much attention, but word on the web has it that Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles has put together several of its best episodes in a row, which unfortunately have also been its lowest rated. (io9 has started throwing around comparisons to Drive. Never a good sign for ratings. Watch this week's episode now!

Sarah Palin winks at America

Video evidence of perhaps the most talked about aspect of the Vice Presidential debate the day after... Sarah Palin's bizarre winking. I guess I missed it, but America sure didn't.

http://www.spike.com/video/sarah-palin-wink/3042408

I've been having trouble embedding videos. I can't get more than a small portion of the "embed" link from YouTube to cut and paste. And it said the html for the Spike.com video was incorrect. Is there something I'm missing?

Vice Presidential Smackdown: Vice Harder

Some quick thoughts on the Vice Presidential debate that just finished. I personally was bothered by Sarah Palin, but I don't think a lot of Americans will be. This is where I have a fundamental difference with a lot of my countrymen and women. I don't think it's too much to ask the Vice President to put gs on the end of words when they go there, or to use words the way they were actually meant to be used. And yet afterwards on CNN the commentators, on either side, universally praised how "folksy" Palin was. Just because people seem to like it doesn't mean it's actually a good thing. Is she going to be in the room with Putin, as the current cliche goes, saying "I'm hopin' and wishin' we can find some positive impacts for our folks back home"?

Okay, rant over. I'm going to try not to do that too often. In terms of actual analysis, I think that Biden did a fairly good job of calling Palin on any outright lies she made without seeming petty (he didn't call her on calling Gen. McKiernan "General McClellan," for example). Palin tried her darndest to do the same, but I don't think she made many of her points with the same specificity. She also said a few things that may come back to bite her. She said she agreed with Vice President Cheney on the subject of expanding the powers of the Vice Presidency. She said she is not convinced humans are responsible for global warming. These are positions that I'm not sure are in tune with what people are looking for.

I think it was a decent strategy on Palin's part to try to link Obama and Biden to "looking backward" when Biden tried to link McCain to the failed policies of the Bush administration. It worked rhetorically to shape the debate the way she wanted it. Biden, however, did not let that effect his own strategy, which was to do just that. In my opinion, "looking backward" or not, every time McCain/Palin talks about changing something from the status quo, Obama/Biden should come back with "Republicans have had the Presidency 20 of the last 28 years. Republicans have controlled the Congress 10 of the last 12 years. Why hasn't any of this happened before now?"

It was sometimes frustrating how much Biden insisted on sticking to the "3rd Bush term" idea, at the expense of offering more coherent versions of his own ideas. It may come off as overly negative. However, I don't think that will be an issue in the long run in a campaign where Democrats seem to often say good things about John McCain but Republicans resolutely refuse to say anything positive about Barack Obama. The "attack dog" role is a traditional one for a Vice President candidate, so the Presidential candidate doesn't have to get their hands dirty.

The usual question after these things is "well, who won?" That is of course completely subjective. I think Gov. Palin gave Sen. Biden the openings he needed to really ram home any advantage he may have had, and I'm not sure he followed through on those. I think he may have performed better overall, but I recognize that many reasonable people may disagree. Many people thought Palin's performance here would hurt the McCain campaign, and I don't think it really did. However, McCain's been steadily losing ground lately in several key states, and I doubt Palin did anything here that would change that.

In other news... wow, the Cubs are in trouble. You'd think I would have seen that coming, but I definitely didn't.

Bits: Space Herpes Edition

-CleanTechnica has posted an article about a "Magnetic Air Car" that purports to be the world's first fuelless car, and hopes to be available by 2010. Apparently, it uses magnets to send compressed air through an enclosed space. "The resulting airflow is then converted to torque." I think there must be more to this than I'm understanding, since I was unaware of air's magnetic properties.

-Sorry Howard Stern, Stephen Colbert is the new "King of All Media." He will be making a guest appearance in the upcoming "Amazing Spider-Man #573." Apparently, in the Marvel Universe, Colbert is a presidential candidate. Can I go live there? The issue's out October 15.

-CNN has managed to come up with what may be the lamest story ever to believably have the headline "Man Punches Shark After 'Death Scream.'"

-Free TV on the Internet: This past week's "Saturday Night Live," with the now-famous Palin/Couric sketch, along with a debate parody and some decent work from Anna Faris, of all people

-The other candidate for "Headline of the Day"... From io9.com: "Space Herpes Is Final Cylon on Battlestar Galactica"

Bits: Theater of the Absurd Edition

-The Machinist today has a great entry on how digitized today's entering college students are, focusing on the Amherst College class of 2012. 99% are on Facebook, 99% have only cell phones, 99% have only laptop computers...

-Michael Grunwald has a great article on Time.com... "Oh, the Drama! McCain in the Theater of the Absurd".

-Watch the Sarah Palin/Katie Couric interview on YouTube. "Saturday Night Live" hardly had to change the words in order make this hysterically awful.

-io9 tells the bizarre story of the recent Season Finale of the Sci-Fi Channel drama "Eureka"... which I recently watched most of without actually realizing it was the series finale. Sci-Fi Channel apparently repeatedly rejected entire plotlines, resulting in the finale basically being improvised by the writers as the episode was filmed... thus lending credence to all those viewers who think "they're just making this up as they go along." "Eureka" is a fun show, but in the end it's inherently "small"... something that, based on my possibly mistaken impressions of what's going on here, may have been Sci-Fi Channel's problem. In other weird news, there's a rumor going around the intertubes that the Sci-Fi Channel wants to change its name to "Beyond." Kay.

-This week's WalrusFile free internet TV pick is the season premiere of "The Office." I'll be trying to come up with a full review of it in the next day or two. In the meantime, discuss amongst yourselves.

-Overlooked News Story of the Day, from the Dayton Daily News: Chemical Irritant Empties Dayton Mosque. An apparent major hate crime not that far from where I live. Sigh.