studionebula.com

I was going to try to stop blogging about the presidential candidates because that seems to be all I’m blogging about these days, but this is just too good. As related at CNN.com, it seems that things are quite a mess in the McCain/Palin camp. I particularly like these statements:

A second McCain source says she appears to be looking out for herself more than the McCain campaign.

“She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone,” said this McCain adviser. “She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else.

“Also, she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party. Remember: Divas trust only unto themselves, as they see themselves as the beginning and end of all wisdom.”

Gee, John, you sure know how to pick a running mate. Not only does she not know diddly about, well, much of anything about being a veep, but she’s not listening to you and she’s already vying to take the reins away from you. And you’re not even in office yet. That must make you feel just dandy. It sure makes me feel dandy thinking that this person could be in control of this country someday.

Actually, now that I write this, it’s not particularly funny–not when you consider what’s at stake.

“If it’s true that Barack Obama really is a terrorist, then we have the worst Department of Homeland Security in the universe.”

–Bill in Portland Maine, Daily Kos

There’s a nice editorial in the NYT here about why Colin Powell endorses Obama. It contains some very relevant reflections about the principles that America is based upon, and how despicable it is that McCain is trying to turn these principles on their ear in an attempt to win votes by rumor-mongering and spreading fear.

I might have to have a Rovio. See http://www.meetrovio.com/. It’s a robot with a webcam and web-based control interface. You can drive it around and look at stuff with it. It looks like it’s the ultimate weapon for terrorizing the cats.

Yeah, okay, it’s pretty geeky. Time for some personal history. I became interested in computers in the first place because I wanted to build a robot when I was a kid. I figured out pretty quickly that the robot needed a brain of some sort, and that meant a computer. So I started learning about computers, mostly from books at the public library.

This was 30 years ago, almost exactly.

There was nothing like a Rovio on the market. There was no such thing as a PC, or webcams, or the web, or wireless networking. It was more or less a completely different world from the perspective of computer technology. Microprocessors were a recent development and computers like the Altair were just starting to hit the market. There was literally no place that you could buy off-the-shelf robot parts. Lego Mindstorms wasn’t even a twinkle in anyone’s eye yet. (I loved Lego nonetheless.)

Rovio pretty much embodies what I dreamed of building: a robot that I could drive around from some sort of control panel. I even thought that it would be super-cool if the robot had a TV camera so that I could see what it was looking at, but that was obviously out of the question. Ultimately I wanted the robot to be autonomous and be able to do stuff like roam around on its own and recharge itself when necessary. (Being able to recharge itself was considered nearly the pinnacle of robotic engineering at the time. It does imply a number of difficult tasks, like locating the charging station, navigating to it, and docking with it.)

It was, of course, a project completely beyond my grasp at the time. But the interest propelled me to learn a tremendous amount about computers and electronics. I never ended up building a robot but I’m now a successful software engineer (with my own successful software company, even) and I build electronic stuff as a hobby.

30 years have passed and technology has advanced to the point at which it’s possible to buy the robot I dreamed of for $300. That’s pretty amazing in itself. Will I buy one? I dunno. Somehow having someone else build it takes some of the fun out of it.

Things are looking good for getting Obama into office, but let’s not get carried away yet. Forecasts and polls don’t win elections–votes win elections. (Well, sometimes courts win elections, but let’s not go there right now.)

In Colorado you can vote by mail, so we’ve already done so. If you’re not already registered to vote by mail it’s probably too late to do so, so don’t forget to vote on the polling day.

The Republican campaign strategy now involves sending their candidates to areas where everybody is a die-hard McCain supporter already. Then they yell about Obama until the crowd is so frenzied people start making threats. The rest of the country is supposed to watch and conclude that this would be an enjoyable way to spend the next four years.

–Gail Collins, columnist for the New York Times

That quotation is part of a longer and fairly humorous op-ed, but I think that she makes a valid point. The McCain campaign seems to be largely based on the strategy of telling us (with lies) that Obama is evil. Even ignoring the issue that none of these accusations actually stand up to close scrutiny, isn’t this a really dumb strategy? I mean, c’mon Mr. McCain, don’t insult us. We already know that you don’t want us to vote for him. Isn’t that a given, since you’re running against him?

Obama, on the other hand, has put a huge amount of effort into telling us why we should vote for him. Personally I’m much more interested in voting for someone who has explained why he should be in office than voting for someone who simply says we shouldn’t vote for the other guy.

There is some interesting info here about the possibility of building an elevator that lifts stuff into space. (Yes, “stuff” includes people.) A Japanese research group thinks that they might be able to start building it around 2030, and NASA has put up $4 million in prize money to encourage design development.

“I have a temper, to state the obvious, which I have tried to control with varying degrees of success because it does not always serve my interest or the public’s.” - John McCain

Ask yourself this: do we want someone who–by their own admission–has problems controlling their temper commanding the most powerful military forces on the planet? Do we want someone with a volatile temperament running the country during a time which will unquestionably require difficult decisions regarding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the U.S. and world economies?

The Crystal Method, one of my favorite groups, has released a remix of one of their tracks, “Now is the Time”, in support of Obama. It’s available as a free download from their website. Get yourself a copy and dance your way to the voting booth.

Just in case you haven’t already heard about Palin’s epic failure when asked to name just one Supreme Court decision with which she disagrees, there’s a video of it here on CNN.com. (The video is seven minutes long but more than half of it is commentary in reaction to her answer, if you can call it an answer.)

I’ll be fair and state that I’d be hard-pressed to answer the same question on the spot. There have been cases that were at the time of enough interest to me that I followed the coverage and thought about the outcome, but now I’d have a hard time dredging up a specific example. But the point is that I’m not running for Vice President. I’m not vying to be second in command of the most powerful country on the planet. I’m not attempting to be next in line for control of the world’s largest nuclear arsenal. I’m not trying to get voted into a position that has considerable influence over the lives of every single American. It’s not part of my job requirement to be intimately acquainted with the role of the Supreme Court within this country’s goverment. It will never fall upon my shoulders to appoint one or more judges to this court–judges whose appointment lasts for many years, spanning the terms of many executive terms, and whose rulings can drastically alter the evolutionary path of law within this country.

Palin is unfit for the position of Vice President of the United States.