David McNett (Nugget)

2011 Komen Houston Race for the Cure

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 22:15:27 GMT

This fall I will be running in the Komen Houston Race for the Cure. I'll be putting on my goofy toe shoes and running a 5K race alongside many of my FlightAware employees and cow-orkers.

The marketing copy I'm supposed to spam you with says that I'll be running in order to "raise awareness" and "fight breast cancer" but really I'm running because holding a high-profile event like this has proven to be a very effective way to raise funds for breast cancer research. And that's really what is needed -- funds. Not coincidentally, that's where you guys, my merry band of LiveJournal compatriots, come in.

I'm going to abuse my knees in the crippling Houston heat but all you need to do in order to help is bust out your wallet and donate a few bucks to the team. You get all the good karma, you get to make a positive contribution to medical science, and you'll help me embarrass my colleagues with my undeniable fundraising prowess. When it's all done I'll even post pictures to Facebook of my feet shod in silly toe shoes for everyone to mock. What a bargain!

All you need is this url and five minutes: http://rfch.convio.net/goto/nugget

My blisters - your dollars - everyone wins.

Hope all is well. things are doubleplusfantastic here.

^ isn't that logo awesome?

OMG A meme

Tue, 11 Jan 2011 01:37:48 GMT

I never participate in these insipid memes, but this one turned out to be fun... Sorry.

Let's start a band!

1 - Go to wikipedia and hit 'Random Article'. The name of the first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band. (mine)

2 - Go to quotationspage.com and hit 'Random Quotes'. The last four or five words of the very last quote on the page is the title of your first album. (mine)
...
3 - Go to flickr and click on 'explore the last seven days'. The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover. (mine)

4 - Use photoshop or similar (picnik.com is a free online photo editor) to put it all together.

So this happened..

Tue, 14 Sep 2010 16:05:51 GMT

This morning I went back and consulted my IRC logs to determine when, exactly, I first stumbled across Craig Mitchell's web-published serial novella "She Hates My Futon." Anyone familiar with my logging OCD will be as amazed as I was to learn that my IRC logs do not go back that far.

So anyway, Craig resurfaced on the net about a year ago and I've been Facebook stalking him and combing his new site (he lost myboot.com a few years ago). This morning he posted a new chapter.

Let me say that again...

This morning he posted a new (penultimate) chapter to She Hates My Futon -- The Stew-Man A Cometh. Chapter 25, the conclusion, is in the pipe.

Those of you who are familiar with SHMF have surely already stopped reading this post and have headed off to find the new chapter. Those who aren't are highly encouraged to start here at chapter one.

"Futon" has been my constant for a decade.

08-Jul-2000 * Nugget94M is reading myboot.com 
08-Jul-2000 <phule> hey, thanks for pointing out myboot.com  that site is wild and wierdly great :)
06-Sep-2000 * ItsIllak idlly wishes the myboot guy would write another chapter or two..
24-Oct-2001 <Nugget> myboot.com rocks.
07-Mar-2002 <RyJones> the novella at myboot.com is annoying, he never finished it
11-Nov-2002 <NevTHC> I was up until 5AM the night I started Futon.
28-Nov-2002 * ODD^work is bored at work, and rereads 'myboot'
05-Jun-2003 <NevDull> I wish myboot.com was updated more often.
13-Apr-2004 <url> i think good story is at http://www.myboot.com
14-Jun-2004 <Mike> I wasted a Saturday night reading myboot
21-Jan-2008 <Leto> omgwtf futon is back?!? 
21-Jan-2008 <gregh> finally finished reading the futon story

Hey, if url likes it you know it's gotta be good...

I don't always do what my mother asks...

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 23:17:53 GMT

Thank Harry Burn (a post by GoofyHoofy)

If you ever wondered who elected Abraham Lincoln, or Grover Cleveland, or Woodrow Wilson, or any of the Presidents before him, it was men. Women couldn't vote. Finally, in 1919, after 7 decades of protest and suffrage, Congress passed the 19th amendment giving that right to women.

But a Constitutional amendment requires passage by 3/4ths of the states, and by the summer of 1920, only 35 of the required 36 had done so. Three had explicitly refused, the others found it not important enough to consider, at least for a while.

Anti-suffrage forces were happy when the Tennessee legislature decided to take up the cause, the head count being slightly against the proposal, but when it came to a vote the count was 28-28.

Harry Burn, then in his first term as a state legislator, had previously announced that he was a "no" vote, but then he got a letter from his mother urging him to vote yes. He did, and that broke the tie and put Tennessee in as the 36th state, and the amendment was ratified.

Asked later what changed his mind he said, "A good boy always does what his mother asks him to do." In spite of, or rather because of that, Burn had to go into hiding for several days, the anti-suffrage forces being so outraged by his "betrayal."

In our lifetime it seems normal that men and women share the vote, but women have been eligible in only the last 16 Presidential elections, while men have voted for all 44 US Presidents thus far.

Sometimes one vote makes a difference. It did for Harry Burn - and for 51% of the country who, up to that point, had no voice in the laws under which they were governed.

Iambic Dudameter

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 19:24:09 GMT

Two Gentlemen of Lebowski:

LEBOWSKI
Was it I, sir, who urinated on your rug?

THE KNAVE
Not in person, sir—but if a man is his name, and his reputation his indelible inkstain, surely thy sea of care is tormented; what tongue shall smooth thy name?

LEBOWSKI
Make me to understand, sir, for you are slow of speech as I of step, and I am unsatisfied in motive. When any rug is micturated upon within these city walls, must I stand accountable? Or are you as one of a thousand rogues, fishing for sixpence betwixt another man’s pursestrings? Are you a labourer, Master Lebowski, earning that you eat, getting that you wear?

Random Thoughts of the Day (MLP)

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 03:16:19 GMT

Author unknown, I'm just a parrot here...

Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you’re wrong.

What would happen if I hired two private investigators to follow each other?

Bad decisions make good stories.

I totally take back all those times I didn’t want to nap when I was younger.

The letters T and G are very close to each other on a keyboard. This recently became all too apparent to me and consequently I will never be ending a work email with the phrase “Regards” again.

Do you remember when you were a kid, playing Nintendo and it wouldn’t work? You take the cartridge out, blow in it and that would magically fix the problem. Every kid in America did that, but how did we all know how to fix the problem? There was no internet or message boards or FAQ’s. We just figured it out. Today’s kids are soft.

There is a great need for sarcasm font.

Sometimes, I’ll watch a movie that I watched when I was younger and suddenly realize I had no idea what the heck was going on when I first saw it.

I think everyone has a movie that they love so much, it actually becomes stressful to watch it with other people. I’ll end up wasting 90 minutes shiftily glancing around to confirm that everyone’s laughing at the right parts, then making sure I laugh just a little bit harder (and a millisecond earlier) to prove that I’m still the only one who really, really gets it.

How the hell are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?

I would rather try to carry 10 plastic grocery bags in each hand than take 2 trips to bring my groceries in.

I think part of a best friend’s job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die.

The only time I look forward to a red light is when I’m trying to finish a text.

A recent study has shown that playing beer pong contributes to the spread of mono and the flu. Yeeaah, if you suck at it!

Was learning cursive really necessary?

Lol has gone from meaning, “laugh out loud” to “I have nothing else to say”.

I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.

More often than not, when someone is telling me a story all I can think about is that I can’t wait for them to finish so that I can tell my own story that’s not only better, but also more directly involves me.

Answering the same letter three times or more in a row on a Scantron test is absolutely petrifying.

Whenever someone says “I’m not book smart, but I’m street smart”, all I hear is “I’m not real smart, but I’m imaginary smart”.

How many times is it appropriate to say “What?” before you just nod and smile because you still didn’t hear what they said?

I love the sense of camaraderie when an entire line of cars teams up to prevent a dick from cutting in at the front. Stay strong, brothers!

Every time I have to spell a word over the phone using ‘as in’ examples, I will undoubtedly draw a blank and sound like a complete idiot. Today I had to spell my boss’s last name to an attorney and said “Yes that’s G as in…(10 second lapse)..ummm…Goonies”

While driving yesterday I saw a banana peel in the road and instinctively swerved to avoid it…thanks Mario Kart.

MapQuest really needs to start their directions on #5. Pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.

Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.

I find it hard to believe there are actually people who get in the shower first and THEN turn on the water.

Shirts get dirty. Underwear gets dirty. Pants? Pants never get dirty, and you can wear them forever.

I would like to officially coin the phrase ‘catching the swine flu’ to be used as a way to make fun of a friend for hooking up with an overweight woman. Example: “Dude, Gus caught the swine flu last night.”

I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t at least kind of tired.

Whenever I’m Facebook stalking someone and I find out that their profile is public I feel like a kid on Christmas morning who just got the Red Ryder BB gun that I always wanted. 546 pictures? Don’t mind if I do!

Is it just me or do high school girls get sluttier & sluttier every year?

If Carmen San Diego and Waldo ever got together, their offspring would probably just be completely invisible.

Why is it that during an ice-breaker, when the whole room has to go around and say their name and where they are from, I get so incredibly nervous? Like I know my name, I know where I’m from, this shouldn’t be a problem….

You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you’ve made up your mind that you just aren’t doing anything productive for the rest of the day.

Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after DVDs? I don’t want to have to restart my collection.

There’s no worse feeling than that millisecond you’re sure you are going to die after leaning your chair back a little too far.

I’m always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten page research paper that I swear I did not make any changes to.

“Do not machine wash or tumble dry” means I will never wash this ever.

I like all of the music in my iTunes, except when it’s on shuffle, then I like about one in every fifteen songs in my iTunes.

It should probably be called Unplanned Parenthood.

I keep some people’s phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.

I think that if, years down the road when I’m trying to have a kid, I find out that I’m sterile, most of my disappointment will stem from the fact that I was not aware of my condition in college.

Even under ideal conditions people have trouble locating their car keys in a pocket, hitting the G-spot, and Pinning the Tail on the Donkey - but I’d bet my ass everyone can find and push the Snooze button from 3 feet away, in about 1.7 seconds, eyes closed, first time every time…

I wonder if cops ever get ticked off at the fact that everyone they drive behind obeys the speed limit.

I think the freezer deserves a light as well.

I disagree with Kay Jewelers. I would bet on any given Friday or Saturday night more kisses begin with Miller Lites than Kay.

The other night I ordered takeout, and when I looked in the bag, saw they had included four sets of plastic silverware. In other words, someone at the restaurant packed my order, took a second to think about it, and then estimated that there must be at least four people eating to require such a large amount of food. Too bad I was eating by myself. There’s nothing like being made to feel like a fat bastard before dinner.

Irrefutable argument against socialized medicine...

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 05:42:15 GMT

From Investor's Business Daily where we learn how socialized health care in the UK leads to euthanasia..

IBD Exclusive Series: Government-Run Healthcare: A Prescription For Failure

"The U.K.'s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) basically figures out who deserves treatment by using a cost-utility analysis based on the "quality adjusted life year."
People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.

Aren't we lucky Hawking wasn't born in the UK! It's impossible to argue against facts like that!

(you can tell he's American because he doesn't have a British accent)

A human face on a current debate

Thu, 21 May 2009 03:14:34 GMT

I recently reconnected with my friend Steven, who I'd known well during the early '90s but had lost touch with over the years. I happened to stumble across an interview with him online over the weekend which sent me off searching for his name on Facebook and all those other places where layabouts from my generation congregate.

When I first met Steven he'd recently met Peter and I watched as their relationship bloomed and grew. I grew to be friends with both of them over the years. As it turns out, Steven and Peter stayed together this whole time and even got married just as soon as the state of Massachusetts allowed them.

Quite tragically, though, Peter died in an accident just about a month ago -- literally just a few weeks before I stumbled across Steven's name and tracked them down. I'm gutted to learn the news and morbidly fascinated by the coincidence of the timing. I wish (and sort of don't wish) I'd found that interview a year ago, or even just a few months ago. It's rough, you know?

In the aftermath of Peter's death, Steven wrote about the impact their marriage had on his ability to navigate the complications surrounding his husband's death. It's sad to reflect on how different the circumstance might have been in the absence of a marriage, a reality faced by gay couples in all those states which do not allow gay marriage. Steven is articulate and his story is moving:

"We will win when we focus on equality."

I'm glad that he was motivated to write about his life because I think it's invaluable for this debate over gay marriage to be grounded in real people and real stories and not the abstract societal ideals that the conversation is so often about. I'm sad for my friend, but I'm more sad for the couples who have to deal with death and weren't allowed to marry.

Brazen plagiarism

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 17:07:33 GMT

Goofyhoofy @ fool.com:

There are two famous tea parties that I can think of.

The first, of course, was in Boston Harbor, where a group of revolutionaries dumped someone else's property into the Boston Harbor to protest the tax on it, the rationale for the protest being "Taxation Without Representation." (Well, actually there's a lot more to it than that, but that's become the popular meme.) Economic terrorism and property destruction at its best! I'm hoping today's protestors aren't calling on that historical precedent, but I could be wrong.

The other famous tea party, and one more closely attuned to today's events is the Mad Hatter's tea party from "Alice in Wonderland." You know the one, where the Mad Hatter (sponsor of the tea party) talks in nonsensical poetry and unanswerable riddles, changes positions at his whim, and fulminates against the Queen or any other imagined slights without bothering to give solutions, evidence, or anything else. He's great at slogans, however.

Perhaps the most appropriate part of the story involves the Mad Hatter asking the riddle: "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" After much discussion, it turns out he doesn't have an answer to his own question. I can't think of a better metaphor for the Right Wing inspired and Fox News promoted astroturf campaign we are seeing played out among the babbling goobers who have only complaint, historical revision, and memory lapse when it comes to the politics of the past eight years.

Love those signs, though.

The house is finally livable

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 21:08:20 GMT

A nice guy named Thomas came out and installed our AT&T u-verse service this afternoon. We've got television and Internet at the new place (yay). I swear I'd rather have this than running water. I've spent about $30 at the iTunes Music Store buying all the television we've been missing for the past 14 days and it'll be nice to get back onto the old broadcast/DVR bandwagon again.

I'm measuring a boggling 21Mbps download / 2Mbps upload from their top tier internet plan. I'm paying $65/month for that speed which is roughly 2/3rds of what I was paying for 6mbps DSL at the Austin house and about half of what I was paying for a 33.6Kbps dedicated modem connection a decade ago. I did give up all my fancy static-ip, routed subnet, reverse DNS goodness as a byproduct of the switch but to be honest I think I'm done with the whole "hosting servers from my house" thing. I just don't find that to be worth the hassle and complexity any more.

On the television side the DVR is no TiVo, but it's at least as good as the DirecTV HR22 that it's replacing. The online integration (for scheduling recordings from a web page) is pretty solid but the flexibility overall seems poor. HD quality looks good but HDMI support is sucky.

Looking forward to watching the Daily Show tonight!

Plate tectonics

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 17:49:42 GMT

The Texas State Senate and State House are both looking at bills that would allow a single license plate (no more front plates). Texas friendslisters, please contact your State Senator and Representative and let them know of your support.

Find out who your representatives are and send them an email asking them to support the bill. (HB309 for House, SB561 for Senate)

En route

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 20:38:36 GMT

Movers are here packing up everything at NuggetHaus 2.0 and tomorrow the journey begins.

New address is:

NuggetHaus 3.0
2131 Colquitt St
Houston, TX 77098-3310
(pics) (map)

Farewell beers at BB Rover's tonight for anyone who wants to commiserate or congratulate.

Brain-meltingly cool

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 21:25:59 GMT

Discover Magazine interviews Gerald Edelman:

Can consciousness be artificially created?
Someday scientists will make a conscious artifact. There are certain requirements. For example, it might have to report back through some kind of language, allowing scientists to test it in various ways. They would not tell it what they are testing, and they would continually change the test. If the artifact corresponds to every changed test, then scientists could be pretty secure in the notion that it is conscious.

How are you pursuing the creation of conscious artifacts in your work at the Neurosciences Institute?
We construct what we call brain-based devices, or BBDs, which will be increasingly useful in understanding how the brain works and modeling the brain. They may also be the beginning of the design of truly intelligent machines.

What exactly is a brain-based device?
It looks like maybe a robot, R2-D2 almost. But it isn’t a robot, because it’s not run by an artificial intelligence [AI] program of logic. It’s run by an artificial brain modeled on the vertebrate or mammalian brain. Where it differs from a real brain, aside from being simulated in a computer, is in the number of neurons. Compared with, let’s say, 30 billion neurons and a million billion connections in the human cortex alone, the most complex brain-based devices presently have less than a million neurons and maybe up to 10 million or so synapses, the space across which nerve impulses pass from one neuron to another.
Our brain-based device learned to pick up a ball and kick it back to a human colleague. It did not just execute algorithms.
What is interesting about BBDs is that they are embedded in and sample the real world. They have something that is equivalent to an eye: a camera. We give them microphones for the equivalent of ears. We have something that matches conductance for taste. These devices send inputs into the brain as if they were your tongue, your eyes, your ears. Our BBD called Darwin 7 can actually undergo conditioning. It can learn to pick up and “taste” blocks, which have patterns that can be identified as good-tasting or bad-tasting. It will stay away from the bad-tasting blocks, which have images of blobs instead of stripes on them —rather than pick them up and taste them. It learns to do that all on its own.
. . .
What we find, to our delight, is that it has intrinsic activity. Up until now our BBDs had activity only when they confronted the world, when they saw input signals. In between signals, they went dark. But this damn thing now fires on its own continually. The second thing is, it has beta waves and gamma waves just like the regular cortex—what you would see if you did an electroencephalogram. Third of all, it has a rest state. That is, when you don’t stimulate it, the whole population of neurons stray back and forth, as has been described by scientists in human beings who aren’t thinking of anything.
In other words, our device has some lovely properties that are necessary to the idea of a conscious artifact. It has that property of indwelling activity. So the brain is already speaking to itself. That’s a very important concept for consciousness.

(more at the article linked above)

Won't be needing this any more...

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:40:23 GMT

I'm a pirate!

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 05:48:45 GMT

Got an email from the fine, fine folks at youtube tonight whinging about the blatant audio piracy in one of my youtube videos. I took some video of a day trip dbaker and I took from Tokyo to Hiroshima and put together a little video using the love theme from st. elmo's fire (at deebses request) and uploaded it to youtube. The video's been online for years. I wonder if they are automatically detecting violations now or if some human reported the video. It doesn't have very many views.

Dear MacNugget,

Video Disabled

A copyright owner has claimed it owns some or all of the audio content in your video Train ride from Tokyo to Hiroshima. The audio content identified in your video is Love Theme From St. Elmo's Fire by David Foster. We regret to inform you that your video has been blocked from playback due to a music rights issue.

Replace Your Audio with AudioSwap

Don't worry, we have plenty of music available for your use. Please visit our AudioSwap library to learn how you can easily replace the audio in your video with any track from our growing library of fully licensed songs.

Other Options

If you think there's been a mistake, or you have other questions, please visit the Copyright Notice page in your account.

Sincerely,
The YouTube Content Identification Team

What's sort of interesting is YouTube's "audioswap" technology. It let me pick an alternative song to replace the audio in the video from a categorized list of freely-available music. They all sounded sort of bland and generic, but it's a much better alternative to just pulling the video offline entirely:

Look before you leap

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 14:32:11 GMT

Just a reminder, we're having our super-special _fool-commemorative edition New Year's Eve nuclear tacos tonight at NuggetHaus. Event is tracked over on the myface.

Festivities begin at precisely 17:59:60 at the moment of today's leap second! (Show up a few minutes early if you want to add that to the day's celebrations).

(crossposted to nucleartacos)

Just say "d'oh!"

Sat, 27 Dec 2008 05:35:03 GMT

Gotcha!

KopBusters rented a house in Odessa, Texas and began growing two small Christmas trees under a grow light similar to those used for growing marijuana. When faced with a suspected marijuana grow, the police usually use illegal FLIR cameras and/or lie on the search warrant affidavit claiming they have probable cause to raid the house. Instead of conducting a proper investigation which usually leads to no probable cause, [police] lie on the affidavit claiming a confidential informant saw the plants and/or the police could smell marijuana coming from the suspected house.

The trap was set and less than 24 hours later, the Odessa narcotics unit raided the house only to find KopBuster’s attorney waiting under a system of complex gadgetry and spy cameras that streamed online to the KopBuster’s secret mobile office nearby.

Follow link above for additional commentary and video of local news coverage of the setup. It's not entrapment when civilians do it to the cops.

Quantitatively Cool

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 20:39:01 GMT

Edward Tufte is going to be passing back through Austin again in late January for anyone who missed his seminar the last time he was in town. I highly recommend it!

Pullet Surprise

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 17:54:53 GMT

Posted by request, here's my standard response any time a grammar nazi flame war breaks out on an internet forum. It incorporates all the usual suspects from my pullet surprise list in one nice, tidy package. This is revision eight or so, I keep finding "great" stuff to add:

What do you expect? This is just an online message board. Nobody here is going to win the pullet surprise for their posts. Mistakes like spelling "lose" as "loose" are pardon parcel with people who learn the language through talking and not through reading.

I could of made that same mistake if I hadn't learned these words by reading them. Sadly, people who don't read just can't cut the muster. Alot of people would just assume watch a movie instead of read a book and it shows in there writing. For all intensive purposes they are exposed to new words strickly by hearing them and they never learn the proper spelling -- It is simple cause and affect. If this subject peeks your interest there are lots of web sight's that can help you learn more.

I've come to turns with it, but the sad thing is that these loosers look like idiots. It's a doggy dog world and they're selling themselves short. One mispeled post to the internet and -- walla -- the whole world knows they don't read books. And there's no statue of limitations for Internet posts -- it will be in Google forever. What could be more important then that? I don't mean that there dumb persay, just that there supposably illiterate. That's not an ad homonym attack, it's just the truth. You might think that this is all just a mute point but I prefer to air on the side of caution. Common, if you don't think spelling matters you're diluting yourself. Don't be rediculous. Learning how to spell will go along way towards making your point. If you want to type a word and you don't know it's proper spelling just look it up on google. I could care less how busy you are, take the time to get it right!

I had a piffany about this: learning to spell words is a right of passage that is to important to skip. Take my advise: if you don't read you'll never be a bonified grammer nazi like me.

What can I say? People who can't spell "lose" just demonstrate that ignorance is blitz.

It makes my head ache.
Revised: 23-Apr-2010

See also: http://macnugget.org/pullet-surprise

Catching a vette in 3 parts

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 19:29:41 GMT


Step 1...	Step 2...	Step 3...

Had an awesome weekend out at Texas World Speedway with karl and I'm eagerly ready for a followup at MSR Cresson on Dec 6/7. I dominated the blue run group and I think I'm ready to move into yellow. Planning on a full dance card for '09 -- join us.

Election/Birthday party tonight

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 16:00:57 GMT

Just a reminder -- we'll all be sharing in the stress and excitement of the election tonight at the third annual Nugget's Surprise Birthday Party. NuggetHaus -- show up any time, most people will be rolling in after work. Bring drinks and snacks, I'll provide the food. Stewart/Colbert coverage begins at 9pm.

Freedom fries, arugula, and lattes for all my commie socialist hippie liberal friends.
Apple pie and cheeseburgers (american cheese, of course) for my gun toting, fascist, science-hating conservative friends.

I'm a nervous wreck. I can't wait for this thing to be over.

I'm old too. :)

Juxtaposition, then and now

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 00:49:09 GMT

Obama Rally Draws 100,000 in Missouri

Barack Obama attracted 100,000 people at a Saturday rally here, his biggest crowd ever at a U.S. event. The crowd assembled under the Gateway Arch on a sunny Saturday afternoon to hear Obama speak about taxes and slam the Republicans on economic issues...

See that building in the background with the dome roof? That's the old Saint Louis County Courthouse where, in 1847, Dred Scott sued for his freedom.

161 years ago the court ruled that slaves were property had no claim to freedom. Today is a different story.

Brilliant analysis

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 06:26:59 GMT

I can't find anything in this analysis of this election that I disagree with.

Please, if you're reading this, make sure you're registered to vote.

Don't mess with Texas

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 20:10:43 GMT

Judge tells woman to stop having kids:

"A judge in Travis County has ordered a woman to stop having children as a condition of her probation in her case of injury to a child..."

I'd buy that for a dollar!

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 01:39:49 GMT

The total cost of the Iraq War will be over $3 trillion, according to Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard public finance professor Linda Bilmes. That's enough to buy a new Toyota Prius for every household in America.

Other things we could have done for the same three trillion:

Buy everything on the UK stock market
Buy a platinum vibrator studded with diamonds for each woman in Europe and the Americas
Buy a 'Bridge to Nowhere' for each house or condo in Alaskan Zip Code 99901
Buy every impoverished American child a lifetime of nice dinners
Give every woman in Afghanistan as many servants as John McCain
Surround the entire country of Afghanistan with a 100 foot tall wall of $100 bills
Give every human on the planet two iPhones

Many more creative uses for the money at the link above.