No sweet ‘16 for chi-town

Personally, I’m not that broken up about Chicago losing the 2016 Summer Olympics bid. I’m also happy for Rio, being the first South American country to host. There are many reasons it wasn’t Chicago’s time. For one thing, no fewer than ten Summer Olympics have been held in English-speaking nations. For Chicago’s Olympics to come right after London’s would just seem a bit silly. I mean, is the whole world supposed to participate in these games, or just the Anglo-Saxon world?

It’s been only thirteen years since an American Olympics, but that’s not a very long time compared to Germany (37), Italy (49), and the UK (61), not to mention huge countries like Brazil, India, and Indonesia, and the entire continent of Africa have yet to host at all.

Finally, I don’t believe Chicago deserves the Olympics, at least not at the moment, because it is so blatantly segregated, and also because the culture of violence is so prevalent there. It is shameful that an American city has gangs of youths running around beating other youths to death with clubs, and fixing shit like that is not going to be easy. In fact, it seems almost ludicrous lobby for the Olympics while the spilled blood is still fresh in Chicago, where in some neighborhoods civilization as we know it virtually ceases to exist.

Violence, corruption, and instability are the reasons Africa, southern Asia, the Middle East and South America have not recieved the Olympics, but with Rio, the time has finally come, and I feel its appropriate. My first choice was actually Tokyo, but Rio will be fine. As for Chicago, well, there are too many serious financial and societal problems that need to be fixed, and the Olympics would only be a distraction.

Contemplating a future idiocracy

I urge everyone who hasn’t to watch the Mike Judge (Office Space, King of the Hill) film called “Idiocracy.” Not because it’s a good film – frankly I couldn’t take any more and stopped watching after the first hour or so. While it grew increasingly unwatchable, it didn’t stop being a disturbingly, head-bludgingingly accurate depiction of a nation with Sarah Palin as president.

I purposefully omit her title “Alaska Governor,” because, well, as she seems to believe it’s a title with no value – something to be tossed aside whenever she pleases – I will show it no more value or respect than she has by announcing she’s resigning this month. The way Sarah Palin operates in the political world sometimes beggars belief; sometimes inducing concussion-inducing facepalms; other times a thumbs-up and a wink and one of those long, polite O….kays. Sarah Palin puts Hoovers in glass cases and hangs lobsters from the Louvre. Some sigh and flip her off; some fawn and bow down before her. And shell out cash. She’s a political Jeff Koons.

Just as some believe Jeff Koons (or that Gehry dude, who conceptualizes buildings based on crumpled tinfoil) is a genius and a visionary and God incarnate, many will see Palin’s move as a smart one. If you’re not running for re-election, why deal with lame-duckness, like George W. Bush? Why not just quit? I mean, it’s not like Alaska needs a governor. It just needs some orderly to hand out state oil profit checks to the people (because that’s not socialist at all.)

Still, everyone knows what’s up: Alaska is too far away and too weird to remain her base of operations. She’s moving to Iowa and pitching a tent…barely six months into the term of the man who beat her. You hear “Crazy” or “Crazy like a FOX” and people chortle because it’s clever to say she’s clever like a fox because she’s attractive and manages to still look foxy after pumping out enough kids to field her own baseball team. It’s true, she, like a fox, has an uncanny drive to survive by any means necessary – even by adapting to habitats that are more densely populated by humans. but foxes stay out of the spotlight.

Time and again, Sarah Palin has dismissed true knowledge of crucial political subjects like domestic and foreign policy, the economy, etc. as meaningless. As long as she smiles and talks tough, she thinks she’ll be fine. Even if what she’s saying is nothing but boilerplate gobbledygook; just going through the motions. Palin doesn’t want to go through petty things like vetting, interviews, debates, or town halls. She wants to talk, and she demands you listen and fawn, and she wants your vote. She believes she’s shed something that every other politician still has – a belief that your style will only take you so far, and you must have substance to back it up.

Perhaps she never shed it, because she never had it; because she possesses something far more valuable: uncanny instincts, and absolutely nothing else. Palin was put on this earth to win. Win basketball games, win husbands, win baby-making contests, and win elections. Not through knowledge, wisdom, and certainly not through preparation or any other external stimuli. She was born ready, and she wins by her will and her will alone. Yes, she plays the same game all other politicians play, but I believe her when she says she’s a maverick, because unlike all those others, she is doing what she was born to do.

We got off easy last time. I mean, she couldn’t very well push an honorable war hero who crashed one too many of his daddy’s planes off the stage; she’d lose too much of her base. So she’ll wait until the next election and this time, there won’t be any old men stealing her spotlight. God help anyone who stands between her and her victory. And then, after she’s painted the White House mauve, canceled all government programs, and handed power either to her husband or to the corporations, we’ll be well on our way to Idiocracy.

We might as well all get total frontal lobotomies now, if we don’t want to end up in Abu Ghraib II or New Guantanamo.

How to end the Gaza conflict

To agree to a ceasefire, both Gaza and Israel are waiting for the other to stop fighting. Since they don’t trust one another, neither wants to be the first to stop. Cairo is deeply involved in negotiations. How about this: get all the muezzins in the region to climb atop the minarets and do a countdown from 10. When they reach zero, everybody stops fighting…at the same time; no exceptions. Diplomatic genius. Why wouldn’t that work? Wait…never mind, don’t answer that.

Chart of the moment – 12/29/08

Despite this dubious tally, I believe this article explains the situation rather well.

Google burns Columbus

Today is October 13th, 2008, Columbus day. It’s been about 516 years since the round-earth-believein’ Italian explorer discovered the New World. So is there a Nina, Pinta, or Santa Maria in the Google logo right now? Nope. But it isn’t the standard logo. Today, google has instead decided to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Paddington Bear. Way more important.

Sooo…what was wrong with him 8 years ago?

Where’s the party at?

The answer to the question “how expensive can a mac get?”

With 8 processors, 32 GB of RAM, a RAID card (whatever that is,) 4 15K RPM hard drives totalling 1.2 terabytes, what is likely NVIDIA’s best graphic card, two (2) 30-inch displays, dual disc burners, and every option box checked, a Mac Pro that starts at $2,700 can balloon to the price of a well-equipped car. Unfortunately, there was no choice of color. Honestly, I had no idea a factory-built Mac could cost so much. Oh well, you learn something new every day.

Smaller isn’t unsafe-er

You hear it all the time: “I drive a big SUV because it’s safer.” Wrong. Smaller does not mean unsafe-er. The 9-foot long Smart scored the highest marks in front and side impact tests conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. I went over to their website to see how big 19-foot utes fared; and it appears as if they haven’t been tested.

GroupFear has so many Americans convinced that a small car isn’t safe, cars cheaper than the Smart for the USDM aren’t looking too likely in the near future. The Smart is a boutique, niche, fringe vehicle only, and costs way too much for its size. However, the very fact Smarts are as safe as cars twice their size is due to the engineering that jacks up the price. The Chinese ripoff of the Smart would likely fail the IIHS test miserably, because it only looks like a Smart.

Nissan wants to sell an electric minicar in the US in the next decade. Its success depends upon how much greater demand for small cars will be. By the next decade, gas prices may well be double what they are now, and it appears the only thing to break the old GroupFear assertion of small=death will be the thousands more dollars a big SUV will cost to fuel up.

The situation on American roads is that big SUVs, while no safer than small cars, are so plentiful, they influence the psychological evaluation of a potential auto buyer. How will a Smart or Fit or Cube or Micra survive amongst all those big bad SUVs, to say nothing of all the road rage (name-brand pharmaceutical pending)?

There’s also the little thing about Smarts and their ilk looking goofy/uncool/ugly, etc., while trucks still look goofy/uncool/ugly, but in a totally different and more socially acceptable way.

Simply unwatchable

That’s how I’d best describe last night’s debate. Fortunately I was doing other things while watching Clinton and Obama spew seemingly endless responses to insipid queries on a host of useless topics. Their cooperative ramblings started to remind me of that Phil Glass guy – you know, experimental music; not debate. No useful information could be gathered from that debate. It was quite simply a waste of time, and I only stuck around for about half of it.

It’s not their fault. Well, it might be Clinton’s. This has gone on too long. They’re both starting to look worse than they did months ago. Their momentum has stalled. They are in limbo; a static aether form whence they may never return. Perhaps the candidate with the lesser chance of winning should’ve bowed out. They’re doing everything they can to torpedo the chances of a Democratic president in 2009, but neither thinks there’s anything to be done about it except to keep going like it’s February. Well, it’s almost May.

Or maybe that’s not fair. Maybe PA should’ve bumped up their primary a little sooner. I mean, why is it so late? Whatever reasons are out there, I doubt they would reconcile the damage that is being done to the Democratic party by this unceasing lull. If we don’t torture, then what do they call these past weeks? Enhanced campaigning techniques?

The finger-pointing, name-calling, and gaffe-parsing is no longer exciting, if it ever was. More and more, I believe the only party that has benefited – even profited – from this excruciating pause in the process has been the press. I really don’t see how they have the constitutions to continue covering every last detail of every last silly speech these two candidates make across our great country.

If they indeed possess such constitutions, why aren’t they something more useful to humanity, like doctors and surgeons?

End this!