Tax plans

Thanks to www.chartjunk

Beer Monkeys!

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2008/11/23/lah.jap.monkey.biz.cnn

Where can I buy my own beer monkey?

The golden mean

Starship design and the Golden Ratio

There is a new Star Trek movie coming out in 2009 and many Enterprise fans are not very happy with the newly designed starship.

You'd think once we invented faster than light space travel, we could invent another way to make shapes and objects more beautiful. However, the creation of beauty in design is one area that ancient mathematicians cannot be topped.

Like many fans, I love the original design of the Enterprise just as much as I fear and loath the Next Generation designs. I decided to pull down a blueprint of the original Enterprise and apply Golden Ratio's to see if there was an answer.

I think you'll agree this is "fascinating". We begin with a humble circle.



Duplicate that circle, times it by the Golden ratio. Place the new circle directly on top.











































Now, we overlay our circles upon a blueprint of the original Enterprise NCC-1701.























Notice how the smaller circle perfectly encompasses the secondary hull where the larger circle matches primary hull. Therefore, the NCC Enterprise 1701 Primary & Secondary Hull is designed in perfect Golden Ratio. But that is not where the art of sacred geometry stops.
























Above is the Enterprise with a Fibonacci spiral overlayed upon it. See how the center point of the booms for the nacelles are directly aligned in golden ratio to the length of the ship. Furthermore, the position of the outer line of the nacelles are defined on the fourth iteration of the Fibonacci rectangle.

Finding Phi ratios in the originally designed NCC 1701 starship is pretty much like shooting fish in a barrel. Since this ratio has long been understood to give visually pleasing shapes, it is no wonder that many fans of the show regard this original design as the most beautiful of the series. The Enterprise featured in the first Star Trek movie was nothing more than a more visually exciting make-over of the original design. By contrast, see how the NCC 1701-D of Star Trek, The Next Generation fits within a Fibonacci Rectangle.


























Well, as you can see, it doesn't. Nothing lines up with the Phi ratio of the length of the ship. The primary hull goes well outside the bounds of visually pleasing geometry. I've always felt that this design was uniquely unattractive, and it appears that ancient architects and mathematicians would agree!

Undecided

Kevin has come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as an undecided voter but simply unrespected people whose opinions are universally shunned by friends and peers until election time, when their thoughts are suddenly in high demand by news media outlets.

iPhone!

If you've seen Lord Of The Rings, you may remember that iconic scene where Gollum is falling towards certain death while holding his coveted ring. He couldn't have looked happier. While I'm not falling into a bubbling pit of molten lava, I am holding my own personal iPhone and I definately have a gollum-like glee about finally owning one. It's every bit as good as I thought it would be. More on that later!

Thoth

Palin Should Step Down Says Conservatives.

Now that the honeymoon of the Republican National Convention is over, the conservative pundits who heaped bushels of rose petals at the feet of Sarah Palin would like to regain their dignity if not their credibility. Kathleen Parker, David Brooks, George Will and David Frum now question Sarah Palins ability to be one octogenarians heart beat away from the presidency. Read it here.

Adding Palin to the ticket could be McCains costliest mistake. He must realize she cannot be hidden from the press for the next 40 days. McCains' no-show at the presidential debate tonight is an ill-disguised attempt to fore-stall the vice-presidential debates which will likely be devastating in every sense of the word to the Republican ticket.

Even the few glimpses the media has had (extraordinarily scripted glimpses in some cases) have been cause for humor and ridicule for Mrs. Palin. While there is little doubt as to why Palin is being shielded from the press, denying the media access to Palin has caused a firestorm of resentment that is just beginning to spill over.

Perhaps the worst thing about Palin is that if the Republicans lose it would simply be common place. However, if the Republicans win it would just be sad and pathetic.

Palin: Neither accomplished or experienced.

I'm getting a lot of noise from various Republican punditry that McCains VP running mate, Sarah Palin, is every bit as experienced as Sen Obama or Sen. Hillary Clinton and, strangely enough, it appears that this sort of ridiculous propaganda spin is going without opposition.

That is as ridiculous a statement as can be made and it's strange to think anyone would believe such nonsense. If we narrow the comparison to Hillary vs. Palin (thereby sidestepping any potential woman-bashing liabilities), we can illustrate just how crazy using the words Palin and Hillary in the same sentence really is.

When we cast ballots for a first-time running candidate, we are voting for that candidates accomplishments as a human being. To say that the accomplishments of Hillary (or Obama) are equal to that of Mrs. Palins is to denigrate the qualities of the accomplished and elevate the status of the common.

Hillary Clinton Accomplishments.

• In 1969, Hillary was the first student to deliver commencement address as Wellesly College where she majored in Political Science. Wellesly College, the original 'Seven Sisters', is consistently ranked among the top five liberal arts colleges in The United States and is highly selective. Not too shabby for Hillary, the daughter of immigrants.
  
• Attended Yale Law School where she served on the editorial board of the Yale Review of Law and Social Action. While at Yale, Clinton took on cases of child abuse at Yale-New Haven Hospital and volunteered at New Haven Legal Services to provide free legal advice for the poor.
• First female partner at Rose Law Firm in 1979.
  
• As first Lady, forwarded the Clinton Health Care plan, though did not gain congressional approval. Advocated for the State Children's Health Insurance Program, Adoption and Safe Families Act, Foster Care Independence Act.
  
• Elected as Senator for New York State in 2000 and was reelected by a wide margin in 2006
  

Sarah Palin Accomplishments

• 1984, Palin won the Miss Wasilla Pageant and was second runner up in the Miss Alaska pageant, where she won a college scholarship as well as an award for "Miss Congeniality".
  
• Palin attended college in Hawaii Pacific College, North Idaho College, University of Idaho finally receiving her BS six years after starting college in communications-journalism from Matanuska-Susitna College in 1987.
  
• She worked briefly as a sports reporter for KTUU-TV in Anchorage.
• She began her political career in 1992, when she won a three-year term on the Wasilla city council (pop 7,000).
• Served two terms as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.
• Was Ethics Supervisor of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission from 2003 to 2004 after losing bid for lieutenant governor of Alaska in 2002.
  
• Served twenty months as Governor of Alaska (pop 600,000).

Frankly, to put Palin & Hillary in the same sentence requires a great deal of justification because the only thing these two politician share is a Y chromosome.

Hillary Clinton, has proven herself an accomplished academic with a good mind and was accepted into two prestigious universities. Unlike Bush, Kerry or other sons of privilege, Hillery was not granted the luxery of "Gentleman's C's" in either university. She had to work for it. Furthermore, Hillary has a long record of community volunteer work and her achievements as a lawyer earned her a partnership with her law firm. Being the wife of President Bill Clinton certainly didn't hurt her chances of being elected as senator, but nobody can say she didn't earn her rightful place in the halls of the senate.

Palin's accomplishments, on the other hand, appear to be exclusively centered around the skills one learns as a beauty pageant contestant. Speaking well in front of a microphone looking good doing it. If there are any other skills on her resume, I am hard pressed to find them. If being a two term mayor for a town of 7,000 people is impressive, that would be a first for me. If being governor of a state whose population is half that of the city of Dallas, Texas for less than two years is impressive, I'm not exactly sure what to say. We're talking apples and oranges.

We vote for people who are accomplished people because we except something to be accomplished when they are in office. Personally, I like the idea that elected officials are smarter than me, though I understand some people find that a little intimidating.

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/paper-trail/2008/9/5/sarah-palins-extensive-college-career.html

In Dick Morris' defense, he is a lying sack of shit.

My thoughts exactly

Pantywaist!

It's Labor Day weekend in America and it arrives on the heels of Obama's slam dunk, rock star acceptance speech for the Democratic presidential nomination. We watched the historic event on the 19th floor of the Omni-Hotel in downtown New Haven and while the crowd cheered at the TV screen and patrons brushed tears from their eyes, we realized that even the most jaded Neo-Conservative Republican goat had to concede Obama's phenomenal skills as an inspirational orator.

Obama spoke to a capacity packed stadium of over 80,000 people while John McCain will be lucky to draw 20,000 when the Republicans hold their own convention. Nobody is under any illusions as to who is the more exciting of the two candidates, least of all the Republicans themselves. But now that each presidential nominee has chosen their vice-presidential running mates (for better or worse), the question remains if the American people will vote their hopes or their fears in 2008?

The choice of a VP running mate has always told more about the weakness of the presidential candidate than their strengths. Obama sees himself as young and inexperienced, so he compensates by choosing an old and experienced running mate in the form off Joe Biden. Although Biden does nothing to help Obama's image as a candidate for change, his addition to the ticket lends a Lyndon Bains Johnson-esque credibility to the effort.

In near perfect counter-point, McCain's self-perceived weakness is his advanced age, his Washington insider experience and his super-hero-like ability to place audiences in psychological stress positions by telling a joke. To fill in these holes, he chooses an unknown, and mind-bendingly unqualified young woman (read exciting) from Alaska named Sarah Palin. Unfortunately, we don't know if she can tell a joke but it's hard to imagine anyone doing worse that McCain

America's thirty-second Vice President, John Nance Garner, famously observed that his job position was "not worth a bucket of warm piss." (Garner once called a writer a "pantywaist" when he replaced the word 'piss' with 'spit'. Unfortunately the misquote stuck in the history books.)

McCains choice of a woman as running mate adds an interesting dimension in the race for presidency. The race for the Democratic nomination between Hillary and Obama was divisive and rancorous with many Hillary supporters claiming to take their toys and go home rather than support anyone other than Hillary. As Democrats attempt to heal these deep wounds and unite together under the Obama banner, McCains unlikely choice of a female running mate seeks to leverage the Democrat divide by offering a consolation prize of a woman as Vice President.

Hug a developer today...

It's so funny because it's so true.

afro ninja

It really is that funny.

41

One more year, and I'll have the answer to the meaning of life.

I simply must have this.

I am sad to report...

For reasons of fiscal responsibility, neither Penny or I are proud owners of a new 3G iPhone. Therefore, 'all the coolness that is me' will have to wait for 'physical embodiment' in October, when my AT&T contract is due for a free upgrade.

However, thanks to the guys at webmonkey, I can keep a close eye on iPhone availability when I'm ready for coolness mojo.

Walmart

When I was in Boston, I was lucky enough to be invited to a local Union hall to watch the documentary "WAL-MART: The High Cost of Low Prices." If you haven't seen it, you can watch the movie at their website.

Any movie attacking Walmart shown in a Boston Union hall is sure to have a receptive audience. However, you may not know that Walmart, as famous for its low wages as it's low prices, is now the number 1 company in the world according to Fortune magazine.

Flowingdata.com has posted an interesting map showing the spread of walmart across America. I think substituting the green dots for yellow 'evil smiley faces' would have made the map much better.

Euless!!??

Euless is a small Texas bedroom community quietly tucked between Dallas and Fort Worth. Like it's neighboring towns, Hurst and Bedford, it is only remarkable at being unexceptional; so much so that the entire region is often called by the unsatisfying acronym H.E.B. Having grown up in Bedford, I remember more colorful names for these three towns. Worst, Useless and Dreadford.

There is no town center in Euless. No community commons. No museums or opera houses. Nothing which speaks to any higher form of functioning. Instead, there are supermarkets, business centers and shopping malls which are scattered unattractively alongside Highway 183.

In fact, the highway is the only place the residents can see the famous spring time carpet of Texas blue bonnets but you have to do so at 75MPH and occasionally dart your eyes towards the small stretches of blue between the medians.

Euless is like that ugly kid in school who never was noticed by anybody and nobody seemed much bothered about the fact, least of all the ugly kid.

So imagine Euless's surprise when it was ranked #34 of the top 100 places to live by CNNMoney.com.

You'd think Euless got a make-over and the ugly little duckling transformed itself into an attractive and lithe swan, but you'd think wrong. This is no story about urban renewal or the success of town planning. Euless is #34 because that's what the database said it should be.

Apparently, CNNMoney.com crunched a wide variety of numbers and spit out a list of the top 100 small cities to live in. Now, this would be perfectly reasonable if Euless was popluated with computers but since small cities are usually made up of people, I take some exception to this ranking.

Not that I don't like computers and I would never be so thoughtless as offend them as a group. I'm sure they would think Euless is a fine place to be, if computers thought, or lived or cared.

As Mark Twain once said, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

Fighting Umbrella

Not only can it protect you from the rain, it can defend you from would be muggers. It also makes watermelons tremble with fear.