The Underground Imagination

This Will Be Fun

From the WaPo:

Just when you thought everyone had moved on... former advisers to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton are in a tizzy over an upcoming piece in the Atlantic Monthly that chronicles the inner workings of the now-defunct campaign. Of particular concern are nearly 200 internal memos that the author, Josh Green, obtained -- 130 or so of which he plans to scan in and post online. When the piece is published sometime next week, readers will be able to scroll through the memos, from senior strategists such as Mark Penn, Harold Ickes and Geoff Garin, and see what exactly was going on inside the infamously fractured Clinton organization. That has some former team members in a panic. And we thought the Abramoff e-mails were fun....

Friday, August 8, 2008

This is segregation box, used in Gitmo to contain violent prisoners. The boxes are just a bit larger than the bodies they contain and they stand upright and there's no window to the outside and they're locked.

Wait a minute.

I think I saw this once. In a movie. Some horror flick. But the psychopath didn't refer to the box as a segregation box. No, he called it...what is the term?...Oh, that's right: an upright coffin.

No torture going on here, ma'am.

Meanwhile Bush is in China lecturing the Chinese government on human rights violations.

87% of Fox News Viewers Voting McCain

Rasmussen has a new poll out stating that 87% of Fox News viewers plan on voting for McCain in the fall. This raises a few questions.

1) Who is the remaining 13% voting for, Obama, Barr, or No One?

2) Do conservatives watch Fox News because it's conservative?

3) Does Fox News indoctrinate viewers to be conservatives?

I used to fly to North Dakota and whenever I landed in Bismarck the airport televisions were always tuned to Fox News. No larger point. I'm just sayin'.

So You're Telling Me He's Old...

The video certainly isn't accurate, but I do believe it's representative. (See, there's nuance in my claim because I put the words in italics.)

Weekly Quantum Physics Update

Quantum particles exist in multiple places at once, but the moment you measure a particle it collapses into one place, thus acting like a classical object such as your computer, which exists in only one place at any given moment. That's it. The quantum object is either in multiple places or it's measured and in one place. Until now.

Duh Duh Dunnnn!

Take it away, University of Rochester press release.

Jordan proposed that it would be possible to weakly measure the particle continuously, partially collapsing the quantum state, and then "unmeasure" it, causing the particle to revert back to its original quantum form, before it collapsed.

Jordan's hypothesis suggests that the line between the quantum and classical worlds is not as sharply defined as had been long thought, but that it is rather a gray area that takes time to cross.

In the latest issue of Nature News, Postdoctoral Fellow Nadav Katz explains how his team put the idea to the test and found that, indeed, he is able to take a "weak" measurement of a quantum particle, which triggered a partial collapse. Katz then "undid the damage we'd done," altering certain properties of the particle and performing the same weak measurement again. The particle was returned to its original quantum state just as if no measurement had ever been taken.

Solid Obama Ad

Obama camp's response to the McCain ad.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

The Inner Circles

A Reader's Digest version of who's really the campaigns.

Perfect

Watch how Obama deals with an interruption during a speech on energy policy today. He handles the situation perfectly. Let us not forget the small things that mark the character of a man and his abilities. I know they've been missing for the last seven-odd years.

Photographer insists on Pledge of Allegiance before Obama rally

Victory For Sanity

Zack and Miri Make A Porno is no longer rated NC-17. Previously the MPAA said that the movie contained too much sex and nudity for an R rating. But director Kevin Smith won his appeal and the film is now rated R.

Whenever the MPAA does something sensible I like to remind folks of how terrible an institution it is. Take for example Hostel 2, released last year and rated R. Here is a description of a scene:

She undresses and lies beneath Lorna in a candlelit recess and proceeds to execute her by sexually sadistic torture murder. After ripping into Lorna's body with a scythe and bathing in her blood, she slits Lorna's throat with a sickle.

But boobies and wee wees touching one another in a comedy is too graphic for 10 year olds.

Give me a break.

Solid McCain Ad

Hillary still killing Obama.

Stripping Baristas? Awesome

Watch the CNN report here. Money quote from the video, spoken by a local resident: "It's like a drive thru strip club."

Yes, but with coffee.

Honestly, I love this idea. Finally no more pretense when it comes to that hot barista who's serving up your morning latte.

The Straight Talk Express: Off Course Again

This time, quite literally.

And check out the O bumper sticker, which made me chuckle.

Obama Is a McCain Wannabe?

Conservative writer Gary L. Bauer ponders whether Obama is more like McCain than JFK.

"Barack Obama claims that as president, he would place principle ahead of politics, but he has rarely, if ever, taken a position that hurt him politically. Even Obama's friend Coburn has said, “It’s easy to work across the aisle on consensus items. It’s when you demonstrate that you’ll stand in between, in no man’s land, between the two trenches of the Democratic and Republican base, and you’ll take the heat. We haven’t seen that from Barack. As much as I like him, he’s not ever rejected anything of his party to be able to stand in the middle.”

KFC Forever!

Dude pleads guilty to murder in exchange for KFC in prison.

Maybe we can get Cheney to plead guilty to war crimes in exchange for the heads of dead rats in prison.

So who's normal?

Conservative blowhard Michael Graham says that Obama is tied in the polls because he's "weird." He mentions that no parent should not give birthday and christmas presents and uses obama's daughter's words about how barack doesn't like ice cream. MSNBC's David Gregory had him on his show "Race for the White House." The clip is below and here Graham's column: http://news.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/op_ed/view.bg?articleid=1111130&srvc=home&position=rated

and for the record, these are obama and michelle's own words about the present thing from people magazine:

People Magazine: Someone told me today that you don't do birthday presents.

Michelle: No, because we spend hundreds of dollars on a birthday party and movie tickets and pizza and popcorn ...

Barack: That sleepover is enough. We want to teach some limits to them. And their friends bring over presents.

Michelle: They get so much stuff that it just becomes numbing. Malia believes there is still a Santa Claus even though she's a little wary because some of her friends are non-believers. But Malia says, "Ma, I know there is a Santa because there's no way you'd buy me all that stuff." [Laughing]

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Get Back to Work

Paris Hilton 4 Prez

It's not life-expectancy, just health-expectancy...

But 8.4 years isn't very long.

Wikipedian Protester

DEA Hiring Mercenaries?

This photograph, from the LA Times, suggests it's possibly true.

UPDATE: The dude in the photograph is wearing a Blackwater shirt.

Evan Bayh's Liberalism

The takeaway from Nate Silver's analysis on Evan Bayh's liberalism/conservatism:

There is no senator more liberal than Bayh in any state more conservative than Indiana.

I See Your Experiment...

... And raise you Obama Porn!

He told the story of a woman found on all fours under stones, dead after several days, with her three-month-old baby beneath her, still breathing. The rescue workers found the woman's cell phone nearby and, on it, a text message to her child: "Dearest Loved One, If you can live, you must remember that I love you."

(Source: New Yorker article on Lang Lang)