Monthly Archives: June 2008

Latest developments in US politics

Hello, it’s me.  I’m prevaricating again. I’m supposed to be writing a letter about why guns and drugs and war are bad, but the Lib Dems won’t be banning any of them. Thank you, Lib Dem extranet!

Two links about US politics:  imvotingrepublican.com – a helpful video full of the sort of people who will be voting Republican in November, and the reasons they will choose for doing so.  Now’s the time to register to vote, if you’re in the US and you want to take part in the general election later this year.

And Barack Obama helpfully twittered me a message the other day about the radical, shock decision he’d taken, so I rushed to his website to see if he’d decided his Veep nomination.  He hasn’t.  Or he hasn’t told anyone if he has.  He’s taking a stand on campaign finance and saying “no” to $80m of public money in protest at how the campaign finance system in the US works. Instead of block grants, he wants to encourage millions of real Americans to make small donations towards his campaign.

When he first sent the link, the video wouldn’t play very well, presumably because millions of Americans were all trying to watch it at the same time, credit cards clutched in their hot little hands, so I read the transcript instead.

And what do I think?  Building a grassroots finance campaign is a good idea, good luck to him.  The imvotingrepublican.com campaign?  Well, it’s slick, well put together, and overwhelmingly negative.  But if it helps move the dividing lines on policy into a debate on real things, rather than huge proxy decisions like abortion and gay rights, which seem to dominate American policy in a way completely disproportionate to their real importance, then so much the better.

Album Cover Meme

Amazing where a few clicks when you’re supposed to be doing something else can get you.

Reading email > allowing Owen Blacker’s comment > reading OB’s Livejournal > finding a meme from January…

Album cover meme

  1. Use Wikipedia’s Random page selector; the article title is the name of your band.
  2. Use the Quotations Page.com’s random quote generator; the last four words of the very last quotation is the title of your album.
  3. Use Flickr’s most “interestingness” explorer”; the third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
  4. Use your graphics programme of choice (Paint or Gimp will do here, people!) to throw them together, and post.

Tweets on 2008-06-19

  • I succumbed and bought a roomba. Now I just need to tidy the house. #
  • @markpack Quick, strike with typographical ligatures while the metal is hot. #
  • Hmm. @owenblacker starts following me on Twitter whilst I’m reading No2ID email. Coincidence? I think not. #

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Tweets on 2008-06-18

  • @markpack wholly hyperbole free? #
  • Trying to stop myself from demolishing the whole plateful of biscuits set out for the planning committee. #
  • Deciding which over-priced city centre lardmonger to frequent in the short gap between meetings. #
  • @willhowells 14724766. Although I’ve only been using it through Trillian since about 1999, increasingly sporadically. #

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Space

How long could you survive in the vacuum of space?
Created by OnePlusYou

Interesting quiz. Some weird and nasty details about what would happen in deep space. You don’t apparently explode, but that’s not much consolation when all the fluid in your body in instantly boiling.

Shame the website wants your personal details and asks you silly questions about winning an if-one. I just lied and gave it made-up data.

Tweets on 2008-06-14

  • Ticking things off my list and heading to Birmingham. #
  • At the ICC in good time. There’s a curious mix of Lib Dem councillors and OU graduands. #
  • Coming home to a beautifully clean house. Wonder how that happened. #
  • Just back from a gentle stroll in our local park, with golden evening sunlight streaming through the trees. #
  • @thoroughlygood blimey, finished discussing hours ago: “one of the crap MOTW ones that are there to make the others look good.” #
  • @thoroughlygood Ah, I wondered if you were having hour long Millennium Elephant detailed discourse #
  • @thoroughlygood Plus no spoilers! And I almost always think it’s crap and no-one else agrees. #

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Tweets on 2008-06-13

  • @rfenwick Choose golf! That involves hitting things AND walking around pretty countryside. #
  • Oh, for pity’s sake, no parallel port? What is wrong with this country?! First MPs resigning, AND NOW I CAN’T PRINT! I DEMAND SATISFACTION #
  • Waddling home after a nice dinner to celebrate submission of P’s penultimate essay. #

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