Reviewing papers at work today, I came across a poll on the Oakland Tribune:
What a dilemma.
Not quite opposites, are they, but somehow still not sufficiently illogical to fox at least 199 voters to far…
Archive for ‘News’
A wedding to remember
From BBC News:
The bride and groom had hired a small plane to fly past and throw the bouquet to a line of women guests, Corriere della Sera reported.
However, the flowers were sucked into the plane’s engine causing it to catch fire and explode.
The aircraft plunged into a hostel.
Palin’s chances in 2012
Now that the US election is over and the Republicans have been comprehensively trounced, the talk has begun of who may run against the incumbent in 2012. Palin’s name is being bandied around with worrying regularity.
But it’s not all in favour. While her die-hard supporters would love her to run for the highest office in four years’ time, those in the party who dislike her way of working are finally starting to talk about what went on behind the scenes in this year’s campaign.
And why not? They have nothing more to lose now they’ve lost the presidency.
McCain, in his concession speech, said that the loss was all his own fault, perhaps because he knows he can never run again and his deputy has a chance of making it next time. According to Palin, meanwhile, saying she caused the failure of their campaign gives her too much credit.
‘I don’t think anybody should give Sarah Palin that much credit, that I would trump an economic time in this nation that occurred about two months ago, that my presence on the ticket would trump the economic crisis that America found itself in a couple of months ago and attribute John McCain’s loss to me,’ she said.
But clearly some believe she did have something to do with that loss, and now they’re starting to talk. About how she wouldn’t prepare for TV interviews, how she had tantrums at bad press reports, how she gave a briefing wearing just a towel and how she didn’t realise that Africa was a continent, not a country.
Even Fox news, which is traditionally sympathetic to the Republican cause, reported the unnamed insiders’ vented feelings.
Here’s the report:
That’s scary.
It’s not inconceivable that she could run for office in 2012, but Palin’s biggest problem is what her supporters see as her biggest asset: her strong views. Palin is a polarising force, and I suspect that in the next four years, out of office and with plenty of time to plan its next campaign, the Republican Party will come to the realisation that it needs a moderate candidate to unify both sides of the party.
Palin, strong though she may be, probably isn’t that person.
links for 2008-10-31
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"The clergyman, in his 50s, told nurses he had been hanging curtains when he fell backwards on to his kitchen table.
He happened to be nude at the time of the mishap, said the vicar, who insisted he had not been playing a sex game.
The vicar had to undergo a delicate operation to extract the vegetable."
Creative freebies and Photoshop water tricks
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Great for giving backgrounds some depth in Photoshop and web pages. I was looking for something like this a few weeks back for a project I was working on. A bit late now, but here for next time.
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Use selection tools, layer effects and highlights to make it look like your image has a sprinkling of water.
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Can’t take beautiful smooth waterfall shots because you haven’t got a tripod? Do it in Photoshop instead.
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Surprisingly easy, effective way to put any scene on to water.
News for the day
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“Elevator maker Otis will replace hundreds of lift buttons in France after authorities found radioactive materials imported from India at a supplier factory, a source at Otis said on Wednesday.”
Otis says there’s no risk to users.
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“While he was cleaning the fish tank in his house, he was holding a fish in his hand and went to the toilet for passing urine. When he was passing urine, the fish slipped from his hand and entered his urethra…”
So it just slipped in, did it? Hmmm… OK. How many people hold a fish in their hand while they go to the loo? And how did it get from there to… well, perhaps best not asked.
Nazi cable TV plans
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Hitler apparently planned to lay broadband cables from Berlin to Nuremberg so he could broadcast propaganda shows to the masses. Why? Because if you relied entirely on radio you couldn’t control the pictures people saw in their mind. Goebbels crystallised the appeal of TV for the party, explaining that:
“The advantage of a visual image over the audible broadcast is the audible becomes a visual image with the help of an individual’s imagination, which can’t be kept under control. Regardless, each will always see his own.”
Dark mornings
Now that we run three mornings a week, we’re both noticing the inevitable, inexorable onset of winter. A few weeks ago we could run down by the river and watch the sun come up. This morning we switched to running on the road, in under the amber glow of the street lights. It’s not nearly so pleasant, pretty or healthy to be running through those fumes.
Nobody likes the darker mornings, and fewer still welcome the gloomy evenings, which mean that night has already fallen by the time you leave work. No wonder the drive to abandon GMT once and for all is gathering support from the likes of RoSPA, Age Concern and the CBI, which reckons that standardising on European time would be good for business.
Yet this weekend we’ll be rolling back the clocks once more, and while it may give us another couple of weeks of sunrise running it also means we’ll all spend more time living under artificial light later on in the day.
That might have made sense once, but not any more. Stuart Hampson explains why in today’s Times Online:
When Britain was an agricultural nation, people got up at first light, spent the daylight hours working outdoors and relied on candles and firelight after sunset. For many today, a typical day runs from 7am to 11pm, so the middle of that day isn’t noon but 3pm. There is a total mismatch between daylight and waking hours.
“Daylight saving time”, introduced in 1916, shifts our clocks forward an hour for seven months of the year. This was still geared to agricultural priorities, allowing farmers to work later on the harvest in daylight. It simply fails to recognise how we now live.
But Hampson’s most compelling argument for synchronising our clocks with the rest of Europe has less to do with the fact that GMT is an outdated construct, and more that lighter evenings mean we’ll use less energy lighting our homes, streets and office.
That, surely, is good enough reason to do away with one winter tradition we could all do without.
A bad news day for the Republican campaign
Every day brings more unfavourable press for the Republicans, which can only be a good thing for the Democrat campaign. Much of it seems to focus on VP candidate Sarah Palin. Why? Perhaps because the chances of her assuming the Oval Office swivel chair before the end of a Republican administration’s first term aren’t altogether unlikely.
Today, having moved on from Troopergate, the networks are majoring on her spending habits, pointing out that the electoral campaign has splurged more than $150,000 on clothes for her, her husband and their kids since it added her name to the ballot. In the words of Politico:
According to financial disclosure records, the accessorizing began in early September and included bills from Saks Fifth Avenue in St. Louis and New York for a combined $49,425.74.
The records also document a couple of big-time shopping trips to Neiman Marcus in Minneapolis, including one $75,062.63 spree in early September.
The excellent Huffington Post, which has become a most-read sources for this campaign, puts this expenditure into context:
During a week in which the Republican ticket is trying to highlight its connection to the working class — and, by extension, promoting its newest campaign tool, Joe the Plumber — it was revealed that Palin’s fashion budget for several weeks was more than four times the median salary of an American plumber ($37,514). To put it another way: Palin received more valuable clothes in one month than the average American household spends on clothes in 80 years. A Democrat put it in even blunter terms: her clothes were the cost of health care for 15 or so people.
The revelation comes on the same day that CNN is reporting how much the Palin family claimed back to fly not just the Alaskan governor but also her husband and children around the country:
Gov. Sarah Palin charged the state for her children to travel with her, including to events where they were not invited, and later amended expense reports to specify that they were on official business.
The charges included costs for hotel and commercial flights for three daughters to join Palin to watch their father in a snowmobile race, and a trip to New York, where the governor attended a five-hour conference and stayed with 17-year-old Bristol for five days and four nights in a luxury hotel.
A campaign spokesperson assured reporters that the clothes will be donated to charity once the race is over, whoever wins.
If it goes the Republicans’ way, the new administration will have 77 days in which to ready itself for office. Think Progress reports an exchange between Palin and some third-grade students. What does a Vice President do? They asked. Her answer: ‘[T]hey’re in charge of the U.S. Senate so if they want to they can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes that will make life better for Brandon and his family and his classroom.’
Except they’re not. The Senate website explains that:
During the twentieth century, the role of the vice president has evolved into more of an executive branch position. Now, the vice president is usually seen as an integral part of a president’s administration and presides over the Senate only on ceremonial occasions or when a tie-breaking vote may be needed.
Is this why The News Quiz was so delighted when McCain named Sarah Palin his running mate?
But perhaps the most worrying story for the campaign, and perhaps the US as a whole, is an apparent endorsement of the McCain campaign from al-Qaeda sympathisers. Says the Telegraph.
In an endorsement that will not be welcomed by Mr McCain’s flagging campaign, the group said that if al-Qaeda wants to exhaust the US militarily and economically, the “impetuous” Republican presidential candidate is the better choice.
Probably not what he wanted to hear.
Technorati Tags:
mccain, john+mccain, palin, sarah+palin, us+election, election
Christmas already
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“Marks & Spencer is selling mince pies that go past their best before date in November. And the store has bags of Christmas sweets that should be consumed two weeks before the big day.”
Starting Christmas three months before the day itself is a pet peeve of mine. The doubly-irritating thing about this story is the fact that the box is clearly stamped ‘Classics for Christmas’. Buy them now ‘for Christmas’, though, and they’ll be off before you open them.
