Political Ads now make up 75% of local TV news time advertisements

This has been quite a fortnight in political ad wrangling.

These ads are not for those that get easily angered at lies or "near" lies. The near lies are far more common and by that I mean things that are true, but when presented make the viewer draw a false conclusion.

For example, Social Security is not a local issue. Someone could be in favor of the IRS taxing Social Security at 99% and it still doesn't matter when you live in a state without an income tax. So anyone playing the Social Security card (especially in Florida) is doing so with the intent to scare senior citizens. That voting block is a three-fer'

1.) Their per-capita participation is high.
2.) There are a lot of them in Florida.
3.) They can be easily swayed.

I have seen Democrats in Florida use that with great success (the only reason Jeb lost in 1994 was because of that). Republicans must have been impressed with its effectiveness, and as such I have seen that several times for local races from both sides.

The "Racist" Ad in Tennessee

When I first saw the so called "Racist Ad" against Harold Ford on TV, I was not sure what about it was racist. I later learned that suggesting that a white woman find a black male (btw, what percentage black is Harold Ford anyway?) attractive was racist. Sometimes what you find objectionable to shows your prejudices more clearly than what you are objecting to. Moreover, if someone is so racist that connecting a white woman with Ford would cause them not to vote for him, what makes you think that person would vote for him anyway?

With just a few days to go, the next week should be very interesting. I will post how I will vote later on.

--Joey

Belief o Matic

I discovered an interesting website with an interesting quiz that gave me interesting results.

Apparently I am most closely associated with (once all the stresses of importance are calculated):

1. Reform Judaism (100%) 2. Liberal Quakers (93%) 3. Unitarian Universalism (90%) 4. Sikhism (87%) 5. Neo-Pagan (81%) 6. Jainism (79%) 7. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (78%) 8. Orthodox Judaism (75%) 9. Mahayana Buddhism (74%) 10. Bah�'� Faith (73%) 11. Hinduism (70%) 12. New Age (70%) 13. Theravada Buddhism (68%) 14. Islam (65%) 15. New Thought (64%) 16. Scientology (51%) 17. Orthodox Quaker (49%) 18. Secular Humanism (48%) 19. Eastern Orthodox (40%) 20. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (40%) 21. Roman Catholic (40%) 22. Seventh Day Adventist (39%) 23. Taoism (35%) 24. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (33%) 25. Nontheist (28%) 26. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (25%) 27. Jehovah's Witness (22%)

Personally, I am glad I went with the "stresses" version because when I just answered with everything having medium importance, I discovered Islam was a closer match than any form of Christianity.


--Joey

More fall beers

As I posted last week, Fall beers rock. I went by Total Wine to see if they had any more Dogfish Head Punkin (I have been 0 for 3--I should have been there on release day or gone to Grand Cru and asked for a special order) the limited run is over, so if you can find some go for it.

I picked a promising mixed six:

Jack's Pumpkin Spice Ale
Blue Moon Pumpkin
Dogtoberfest
Red Hook Late Harvest
Midas Touch
Franzikaner Dunkel


The first one was a very solid pumpkin ale. You get the expected malty beer with pumpkin pie spice flavor. It is a little watery, but very good, totally acceptable, and for the price, forget about it. Guess who makes it? Old AB, in between batches of Bud Light, has made an interesting, drinkable beer. Who would have thought?

--Joey

Photo of the week October 6th 2006

Photo of the week October 6th 2006

I saw this guy in my Aunt's neighborhood, and I happened to have my camera with me since I was preparing a photo record of my senior design project tests. This is my first photo of the week, in a while, that has not been published days after the fact.

3.14159 only 99,994 digits to go

Apparently a Japanese man memorized 100,000 digits of PI which I can confidently say is no easy task :-P

Back in 6th grade I had to memorize 50 digits of PI for my math class. My teacher was an idiot and she used to say "Now if you can memorize 50 random digits of PI you can memorize anything!" She was referring to memorizing volumes, surface areas, and the like of shapes which
1.) Are usually variations of each other
B.) Can be reasoned out

The weird thing is, that I can actually still remember them. At work I spouted them off, with my coworkers thinking I was making it up (which is tough to do, go ahead, spout off 50 digits and try to make it sound memorized). For the more incredulous among them, I dialed up a website with 100 digits, and ripped through 50 making one transposition error.

I am afraid, that 43 digits of PI are preventing me from remembering something else.

I personally don't get it, 3.1416 is good enough for God and engineers.

--Joey

Internet Gambling, Definition of Pedophile and Scary Softdrinks

Weeks like this make you hope for revolution.

Legislative Riders must end. Internet Gambling, which has always been illegal, because the government doesn't think you are capable of knowing what is best for you, was made tougher this past week by constricting the financing vehicles. Naturally, the bills sponsor, Jon Kyl, would be so proud of this that he would put it to an up or down, yay or nay, vote on the senate floor, on the merit of this idea alone...right? No of course not, he weaseled it on to a port security bill thereby assuring its passage. It is tough enough to have political discourse in a 30 second TV spot, much less try to defend voting against port security because of gambling. We need, more than ever, senators with the balls (bluff?) to propose that all legislation be discrete. Port security is on a port security bill, online poker is on the online poker bill, and rules for what to say to your page on yet another.

Speaking of which, Mark A Foley, who cleverly devised the screen name MAF54 with cryptographic elegance, was caught in the middle of a revolting set of chat transcripts. While Republican leaders are busy pointing fingers at each other over who knew what when, the Dems can finally get excited about something after weeks of being disappointed by positive, but inconveniently timed, economic indicators (including the much talked about price of gas). While beyond creepy, can people stop referring to Foley as a "pedophile"? The kids were 16 which is the age of consent in many states. He should be considered a predator, a disgusting example of a human being, among other things.

I wrote a poem for the occasion

This Guy's Fawked
written by Joey (who is right here)

Remember remember the 7th of November
The absense of reason and thought
Every scandal they can handle
Which is spin for pandering a lot

Now let's move on to the important issues of the day such as what to do about the Cocaine softdrink. Insert eyes rolling here. If I had a new product my marketing strategy would be:

1.) Name it something inflammatory
2.) Call media whore politicians with "concerns"
3.) Wait for buzz
4.) $

The drink does not have cocaine, but a lot of caffeine (two cups of coffee worth). From the Daily News

Several Council members, led by James Sanders Jr. (D-Queens), called for a boycott of the drink yesterday at a news conference outside City Hall. [..] "There are only two reasons that you would seek to use this infamous and insidious name to market your so-called energy drink - either you are woefully ignorant of the horrors of cocaine addiction or your god is the dollar bill," Sanders said.

How about maybe you worry about actual problems with actual cocaine?


--Joey

Autumn beers rock

For beer lovers, the Fall can not be beat. Friday, I tried Blue Moon's Pumpkin Ale. I consider Blue Moon's flagship beer, the witbier, to be a decent drinkable option when there isn't a lot of choice. The Pumpkin Ale, is a good beer. Not my favorite Pumpkin (Dogfish Head takes that one) but very good, and very drinkable. I bought a sixer and by the time the game was over, there wasn't a single one left. I only had two, the other four got stolen along with the cooler as it was in from the back of Scott's truck. Oh and USF lost a heartbreaker to Rutgers 22-20.

Tonight, I tried one of the Sam Adams Brewer Collection beers. The "Root Beer". You know that it is different from the moment you crack open the bottle and take a whiff. There are some beers just so unique, you have to try them even though you may not want to drink more than half a bottle. This one joins these two on that list

Sierra Nevada Bigfoot - This is a barley wine that is interesting but ultimately undrinkable. For people that enjoy hot sauces, they may enjoy this analogy. You get some hot sauce and love it, only to find out there is an even hotter version of the same sauce. So you try that, and are just loving life. What's that? An even hotter one? Then you realize, at this point, it is interesting, but you can't eat your chicken wings now. It is kind of like that. Or perhaps I am just not worthy.

Duchesse Du Bourgogne - A Flemish Red which is like a Cherry Lambic, an ofest, and champagne all blended together, delicious, but 8 ounces is plenty and not something you want to have with "football food".

--Joey