Debate debacle

Yawn... The only thing that came of this first debate was the confirmation that Kerry is a better speaker than Bush. In case anyone missed it, the debate went something like this...

Kerry: I will do a better job.
Bush: But you give mixed messages.
Kerry: No, they are not, my message is I will do better.
Bush: But our country cannot have a leader that gives mixed messages.
Kerry: I will do better by not outsourcing our defense.
Bush: You will transhipment them home, fleeing Iraq, and that is a mixed message.
Kerry: That is where the president and I disagree. I will do a better job.
Bush: But you said Iraq was the wrong war, that is a mixed message. That is not a leader.

Lehrer: Ok, your closing statements.

Kerry: I will do better. God bless America. See, I can be religious too.
Bush: America's president cannot give mixed messages. I'm even more religious, God bless America times infinity.

Maybe Badnarik will be successful in his lawsuit against Arizona and the third debate. He would surely spice things up.

Instant runoff voting

One of the other grad students and I have been discussing a plan like this for a while now. We just haven't wanted to take the effort of writing up a referendum legal mumbo jumbo for it. It's great to see that someone in San Francisco thought up this great idea as well and actually acted on it.

Here's the basics of it:

The system, which voters approved in 2002 and is having its first run, is viewed by critics of winner-take-all elections as the start of a long-overdue overhaul of the way Americans choose elected officials.

Under this system, voters can choose three candidates for each office, ranking them in order of preference. If no candidate wins more than 50 percent of the first-choice votes, the lowest-placing finishers are eliminated, and the second and, if necessary, third choices on those ballots are counted until someone garners a majority.

The system removes the need for a separate runoff election, saving money and, if the recent past is a guide, increasing the number of voters who have a say in choosing the winner. Under the old system, turnout usually dropped significantly in runoffs.

Now why is this such a great idea? Well, why do people not vote for third party candidates? The answer you always hear is because its a wasted vote. This system completely eliminates the wasted vote theory.

For example, I can vote Badnarik as my 1st choice and George Bush as my 2nd choice. Because Badnarik obviously won't have a competitive chance in hell for this election, my vote will go towards Bush. Tada! My vote was not wasted! This simple procedure change to the election will allow third parties an actual chance at winning.

The best thing that San Francisco can do with this is publish the results of only looking at 1st choices as well as the final results after the losing 1st choices are eliminated. This will slowly prove to people that third party candidates have a shot at winning and more people will vote third party without worrying about the 'wasted vote.'

UPDATE: Hot damn! There's a complete website on Instant Runoff Voting.

More support for private schools

Milwaukee, Wisconsin provides evidence on how their voucher system is working.

• In the graduating class of 2003, Milwaukee students using vouchers to attend private high schools had a 64% graduation rate.
• That same year, the 37 Milwaukee public high schools for which data are available had a combined graduation rate of 36%.
• Milwaukee's six academically selective public high schools, whose students are likely to be more advantaged than choice students, had a combined graduation rate of 41% in 2003.
  

Competitiveness benefits schools and students. What a concept...

1 million Americans in national service

Say Anything has found an interesting tidbit from one of John Kerry's plans, although now the page is no longer on the official site (archived here). Apparently John Kerry wants to require two years of mandatory service for high school students.

I think mandatory service of any kind is wrong, but how can democrats charge Bush with wanting to reinstate the draft when Kerry's plan is even worse!

Judge rules against Patriot Act

...Well, just a part of it.

U.S. District Judge Victor Marreo ruled in favor of the American Civil Liberties Union, which challenged the power the FBI has to demand confidential financial records from companies as part of terrorism investigations.

Rock on.

Some kind of contract

Thomas Sowell once agains manages to eloquently point out one of the huge flaws of social security.

Would you sign a contract that enabled the other party to change the terms of that contract at will, while you could neither stop him nor make any changes of your own? Probably not. Yet that is exactly what happens when you pay money into Social Security.

Conan to oust Leno in 2009

Here's some interesting news. Apparently Conan O'Brien will take over Jay Leno as host of the Tonight Show in 2009. Having an earlier time slot worries me that Conan's show may have to be less ridiculous than it has been at the 12:30 slot. That would be a shame, because I love the humor they have going for them now. Conan is great though and will be vastly superior to Leno. For some reason I do not understand, I have never found Leno to be funny. I cannot see how he gets better ratings that Letterman.

Maybe Triumph will take over Conan's Late Night show.

The end beckons

It has been far too long. The End has called out to me, and I could not resist...

AGATHODAIMON - Serpent's Embrace
AMON AMARTH - Fate Of Norns
CROWN, THE - Crowned Unholy
DARK TRANQUILLITY - Exposures
DEAD SOUL TRIBE - A Murder Of Crows
DEATH ANGEL - The Art Of Dying
DISILLUSION - Back To Times Of Splendor
FALL OF THE LEAFE - August Wernicke
LILITU - The Delores Lesion
MASTODON - Leviathan

...so much music to buy.

UPDATE: I love The End. I just recieved this today, 4 days after ordering. How's that for free shipping?

Kerry knows more than Allawi

Mark Steyn writes a rather brutal attack in response to Kerry's 'fantasyland' statement downplaying Allawi's speech to Congress.

What a small, graceless man Kerry is. The nature of adversarial politics in a democratic society makes George W. Bush his opponent. But it was entirely Kerry's choice to expand the field, to put himself on the other side of Allawi and the Iraqi people. Given his frequent boasts that he knows how to reach out to America's allies, it's remarkable how often he feels the need to insult them: Britain, Australia, and now free Iraq. But, because this pampered cipher has floundered for 18 months to find any rationale for his candidacy other than his indestructible belief in his own indispensability, Kerry finds himself a month before the election with no platform to run on other than American defeat. He has decided to co-opt the jihadist death-cult, the Baathist dead-enders, the suicide bombers and other misfits and run as the candidate of American failure. This would be shameful if he weren't so laughably inept at it. [emphasis mine]

UPDATE: Varifrank also has something to say on this.

What I saw happen today was the Senator do something I never expected. The Senator has decided he will not run from the firm liberal traditions of the Democratic party, a party whos theme song was once "happy days are here again", and ran from a solid pro-american positive future platform. The Senator has decided that he will run against the United States of America.

The end of PayPal (and our society)

Paypal just initialized their own demise. They are restricting what you can or cannot spend your money on. Not only will they determine what people can buy, they will now have the power to fine you $500 for something they don't like. Lets take a look at their new policy on adult related material.

PayPal may not be used to send or receive payments for any adult, sexually oriented, or obscene materials or services. This includes, but is not limited to:

* Any material or services suggesting sexual activity
* Any material or services designed to sexually arouse the viewer or reader
* Non-adult services whose web site marketing can be reasonably misconstrued as allowing adult material or services to be purchased using PayPal (e.g., a web hosting service that markets its services by displaying sexually explicit graphics and the PayPal button on its home page)

How's that for a subjective policy. Who determines what is or is not sexual activity. Who determines what is sexually arousing? Am I going to be fined $500 for buying a Strapping Young Lad cd with a song entitled Rape Song? Will I be fined for buying a Cannibal Corpse shirt with a naked woman on it because someone at PayPal thinks it suggests sexual activity? The whole thing is just ridiculous.

Now, one must ask the question, why in the hell are they doing this? A spokesmen claims:

"There is a business risk associated with those categories, and we are moving to protecting our users," Pires said.

If people are using PayPal to purchase pr0n without a contract, then they are irresponiible and deserve to be ripped off. I assume that the majority of the people who buy online are doing so through a contract. Auctions through eBay for example, are legally binding contracts. So there exists already means to protect a buyer. The ratings system on eBay also allows people to be wary of risky sellers.

Now I think that any company can choose to deny service to anyone, a business does not have an obligation to serve me. I could go off on a medicine industry rant here on how we are destroying drug companies by people thinking they have an obligation to serve us, but I won't. What this little policy will do for PayPal is make them start looking out for competitors. As of now, PayPal is the method of online paying, but now PayPal has created a consumer who cannot use their business: the pornography consumer. Can anyone take a guess of how large of a market there is online for pornography? Could they have thought of a better decision to run themselves into the dirt? And for what? Well...

Being an anti-socialist libertarian, the statement "protecting our users" sends off so many flags in my head. Hell, just look at my Ayn Rand quote on the right. 'Protecting' people has always been the excuse to pass laws that restrict my rights and I for one, will not stand for having my rights taken from me.

Why are people trying to ban guns? To protect people from gun violence. Why is smoking illegal indoors everywhere in California? To protect people from the dangers of smoking. Why is marijuana illegal? To protect people from an evil drug. Why was alcohol made illegal? To protect people from the abuse of alcohol. Why was the Patriot Act written? To protect people from terrorism. Why is anti-gay marriage legislation going through in many places? To protect the family. Why are political correctness laws created? To protect people from hate speech. Why does social security exist? To protect people when they retire.

Why the hell do we as a people allow this bullshit? Damn it, I am capable of taking care of myself! I am capable of thinking and making decisions for myself! I am not going to throw away my rights so that the government can claim that I am 'protected.'

Vote libertarian for fuck's sake.

Thomas Sowell

So I'm sitting here not doing my condensed matter homework, mostly because it confuses me immensely, and I fell upon reading some columns by Thomas Sowell, a free market economics guru. Sowell's column appears on Townhall.com, a conservative website that gathers and shows numerous conservative columns from various sources. Many of the columnists blabber on and on without much reason to their columns but Sowell always manages to write an intelligent piece of work. I'm thinking about buying his book Appliec Economics, a book on the benefits of a truely free market and how liberal policies actually hurt the economy.

Here is Thomas Sowell's column archives on Townhall. Below are some of the more enjoyable writings that I read today.

Here is a piece on John Kerry's blank resume.

He has comments on the whole 'price gouging' in Florida.

A glimpse through the left's vision.

And finally, a great article on the 'working poor.'

Ok, time to get back to banging my head against my physics books.

Migrating shellfish

So apparently some Norwegians claim that our planet is warming up as evidenced by some migrating mussels. And of course, the story reporter, most likely a liberal, indicates that this is because of our polluting. Here is the ridiculous contradicting paragraph that completely rebuts their argument.

"It seems like the mussels we found are two to three years old," he told Reuters. Such shellfish have not been recorded off the islands since Viking times 1,000 years ago during another warm period.

Unless this reporter wants to argue that the vikings were cause of global warming 1000 years ago, this article is telling us that during a previous normal warm period of the earth there were mussels, but now this warm period where the same mussels are living in the same place can only be explained by global warming caused by our greenhouse emissions?

There are no actual quotes in the article of the Norwegians claiming that the warming is caused by our pollution, so I don't want to place this criticism on them. It's just the liberal spin that the reporter is throwing onto the story.

Anchor management

Because I and another of the beer posse have class on Tuesday nights from 5:30 to 7pm, a regular beer night on that day just can't happen this semester. But that's not the end of the story! I have figured out a way to satisfy my Crown & Anchor withdrawal. I simply stop by the Crown after the Tuesday night class and grab a beer and a burger. It's a good price dinner and it tastes as good as I remember it. And best of all, we still will continue to entertain Moose's with our presence on Wednesdays. I just must remember to not drink more than 1 beer on those nights, else it would become too expensive. The only downside is that now it will take 30 weeks for new Crown apparel, but I think I can manage that for now. I'm about to get my second denim jacket (480th beer).

Badnarik slashdotted

That's right. 15 Questions with Michael Badnarik, the libertarian candidate for president.

Lockout time

Well dammit, the only sport I really care about looks as if there isn't even going to be a 2004-2005 season. Yep, the NHL is locking out their players. I was excited about a new season of watching my Columbus Bluejackets struggle to win games and the potential of the Penguins actually doing something with Mario Lemeiux returning and their newly acquired Mark Recchi. And Calgary! The team Macgyver roots for! How can anyone not love them? Who could have expected them to nearly win the cup last year. I'm very disappointed. Why the hell can't people watch more hockey and make it a more profitable sport.

Moore stupidity

And now, a message from Michael Moore....

Some fun highlights:

Only 30% of the country calls itself "Republican"

I wonder how many people call themselves a democrat? I bet its around 30% as well.

The polls are wrong. They are all over the map like diarrhea. On Friday, one poll had Bush 13 points ahead -- and another poll had them both tied.

Ok, so lets take an average, and say Bush is ahead by only 6%. That's still a lead. It certainly can't be wrong that none of the polls show Kerry ahead.

And folks, that "job," you might have noticed, has descended into the third level of a hell we used to call Vietnam. There is no way out. It is a full-blown mess of a quagmire and the body bags will sadly only mount higher.

Spoken like a true patriot. Go have a conversation with a Vietnam vet and an Iraqi vet. I imagine they would come to a far different conclusion. Michael Moore and many radical democrats want Americans to see Iraq as Vietnam so that America hates the war, and kills any possible chance of us actually succeeding. The biggest defeat Michael Moore fears is not John Kerry losing, but the Iraq war succeeding, so he must do all he can to see the war efforts fail.

The majority are with us! More than half of all Americans are pro-choice, want stronger environmental laws, are appalled that assault weapons are back on the street

And by golly, that's all there is to being a democrat.

Do we have any other choice?

Sigh... Oh let's see. David Cobb, Michael Peroutka, Ralph Nader, and of course my choice, Michael Badnarik.

Service sum up

Some great bloggers, John Hinderaker and Scott Johnson of Power Line and Edward Morrissey of Captain's Quarters have authored a good op-ed piece in the New York Post providing a good primer to some of the controversies on Kerry's record. They lay out many of the facts as they stand now on a couple dates of Kerry's service.

Second-hand lives

I just finished reading The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. It was a fantastic book. The end got a bit preachy in getting out Rand's theory of Objectivism, which libertarianism is founded upon. The pure oddity of the character of Howard Roark, Rand's vision of the perfect man, and Rand's ability to make the reader feel for him and root for him in face of overwhelming socialist adversity make the book damn hard to put down.

The Fountainhead definitely makes it onto my list of favorite books of all time. And apparently Atlas Shrugged is even a better book. I can't wait to delve into that. I have a feeling I'm going to be building up quite the Ayn Rand library soon.

Kerrybiscuit

55% to 42% lead for Bush

Nothing is going Kerry's way lately.

Sen. Kerry is like Seabiscuit: He runs better from behind

Now that's a quote from a real winner.

How low can they go

Now this is just mean.

Question time

Varifrank has some interesting questions regarding Bush's Air National Guard service.

Beer night dilemma

So last semester we stopped going to our favorite place for our weekly beer & food, the Crown & Anchor, an awesome place with a great selection of beers and very tasty food. The reason was because they had stopped UNLV night specials, which made the place just too expensive for our weekly drinking night, especially when there was another place, Moose's, where the same size draft beers were less than half the price as the Crown, $2 versus $4.50. Moose's beers are cheap because happy hour runs during the prime hours of 4-9pm, whereas the Crown's happy hour only lasted until 6. So we abandoned the Crown and became Mooseheads.

We've started to really like Moose's. It's cheap and has very friendly people and waitresses. The food however has never been as good as the Crown's though. But now, we've discovered that the Crown has reinstated UNLV night, which means we could start going back to our old familiar drinking hole that we loved. I went there almost every tuesday for 3 straight years, so I do really miss the place. But we've now grown to enjoy Moose's as well, so we are in a pickly of what we want to do for beer night.

I am leaning towards going back to the Crown so, in addition to the better beer and food, we can continue our journey for more and more Crown & Anchor apparel granted by their "down the hatch" drinking club.

Smoking the evening newspaper

Michael Badnarik, libertarian for president, has some words on the silliness of restricting hemp in our failing war on drugs. I don't know a whole lot about hemp, but it looks like the stuff can be a good resource for various products.

2nd amendment actually observed

That silly assault weapons ban expired. Although the article states correctly, the picture in the article is inacurrate in that it is still illegal to buy AK-47's and Uzi's, so tell anyone that argues otherwise to can it. I personally laugh at any 'evidence' that this ban lowered gun crime. I am more frightened every time the government tries to take away my rights, such as limiting my right to go to the store and buy a gun.

UPDATE: Michael Badnarik has something to say on the 2nd amendment.

Rathergate

Just in case you haven't heard of this CBS Bush document situation yet, Glenn Reynolds has a good roundup on the topic.

Brainwashing 101

Evan Coyne Maloney is spearheading a project called Brainwashing 101 whose purpose is to show the liberal bias and ridiculousness of political correctness abounding today on college campuses around the US. The 46 minute documentary is available for free downloading from the site. This is just a teaser until their feature length film, which should be available next year sometime. Go watch it, it's rather interesting.

Superpython

In case anyone doesn't know, I'm a huge Monty Python fan. That British group made some of the most funny skits ever wrought by mankind. And John Cleese is probably one of the most hilarious / ridiculous men alive today. So now, the great John Cleese is co-writing a superman comic entitled Superman: True Brit. The premise is what would Superman be like if he grew up in England, helped along by the british humor of John Cleese. I'm not a huge comic person, but this is probably going to be a must buy.

In-sourcing jobs

Well, here's an interesting fact that John Kerry is certainly never going to tell you.

While reliable figures aren't available for the last two years, the Commerce Department estimated on March 18 that the number of Americans employed by U.S. affiliates of majority non-U.S. companies grew by 4.7 million from 1997 through 2001. In the same period, the number of non-Americans working at affiliates of majority-U.S. companies abroad rose by 2.8 million.

Is out-sourcing really the problem that the media tells us it is? Of course not, its just something people are preaching to try and get Kerry elected. If John Kerry creates any laws that restrict out-sourcing, he will certainly cripple other countries from outsourcing jobs to us. Say 'goodbye' to those Mercedes-Benz and Nissan factories.

"Any way you slice it, the world is creating or transferring more jobs to the U.S. than we are doing to the rest of the world," said Daniel T. Griswold, a trade specialist at the Cato Institute, a research organization in Washington.

Any attempt to protect our US companies by restricting free trade, like what Bush disastrously attempted with his steel tariffs, is always going to have a negative impact on our economy.

Lying soldier comes clean

A Vietnam vet has signed an affidavit claiming that Kerry and others persuaded him to make up war atrocities in 1971. Ouch.

Genesis goes boom

Well, the Genesis Space Capsule crashed in Utah because it's parachute failed to open. Way to go NASA. The thing was designed to go beyond the reach of the Earth's magnetic field that deflects many particles in the "solar cloud" of the Sun in attempt to determine more specifics of the Sun's composition and evolution.

UPDATE: Apparently our leftist media is blaming Bush for the satellites crash.

Priceless quote

Kerry really needs to start watching what he says. He must forget that he's a presidential candidate and anything he says will be publicized.

...I think that's the way it ought to work, for confused people like me who can't make up our minds.

The quote is actually quite harmless when taken in context that he has trouble deciding what he wants to eat and being friendly with a local restaurant owner, but... well, you know what will happen with something like this. Although, it really is a damn amusing quote coming from John Kerry.

Convention scorecard

Vox Day shows a 6-2 result in favor of the republicans for the conventions. And he ends it with a great quote:

Add it all up, and I see no reason to modify my earlier statement that John Kerry will get beaten like a Vice City hooker this November.

Gun toting Kerry

Drudge shows that John Kerry is just a walking contradiction. There are enough pictures out there with Kerry firing guns that, if I didn't know any better, I would expect him to be against many of the ridiculous gun control laws. That would certainly set him apart from Bush, who has also mentioned he will be supporting the assault weapons ban.

This reminds me of something Michael Badnarik stated last night. He told of how when living in California he became a felon on 6 different accounts one day when California passed 13 gun control laws.

Badnarik in Vegas

Michael Badnarik, the libertarian candidate for president, spoke today here in las vegas. He's a damn good speaker, even with the crappy microphone the place had. He managed to get me fired up about voting libertarian. Tonight, in addition to the libertarian platform, he was preaching that his goal is tostart polling 15% in order to get onto the presidential debate. It would be great if he did, because he would easily outperform Bush & Kerry. People would then realize that there was an alternative to vote for.

I had one of my first celebrity sightings at the speech as well. Penn of the Penn & Teller duo was there. He's one of few celebrity libertarians.

UPDATE: The Las Vegas Sun reports on the event.

Kerry Uh oh's

More and more bad news for Kerry.

McCain-Feingold repercussions

Vox Day comments on Bush's recent violation of the first amendment. Maybe creating this federal law wasn't such a hot idea.

Liberals sinking their hooks into the AP

Here's an interesting bit about a fabricated lie by the Associated Press. Also interesting is that there is no listed author for the story, which has now been changed.

A glimpse into the future

SDAI-Tech1 has taken a ride on Lapham's time travel machine to watch the Bush / Kerry debate moderated by Jim Lehrer. Read about it here. Very amusing.

Government play time

I'm sure every university with graduate programs have a Graduate Student Association type of governing body, which I imagine is just as worthless as the one we have here at UNLV. Well it's now for one of us physics grads to give our voice of reason to this silliness and I just relunctantly volunteered to do it. I do not want to do it at all, but no one else was volunteering, and if we didn't have a GSA representative than our vote would go along with another rep, like Chemistry.

I went to one GSA meeting last year when our rep wasn't able to make it and needed a proxy. It was absolutely pointless and useless as any governing body. All the kids get together to play government and feel important. I watched as most of the reps looked around the room being bored and a couple, such as the political science department, speak out as if what he said mattered. I vaguely remembered that he argued about some improper format of some paperwork.

Hopefully I can live up to one of our previous reps who all the other GSA reps hated because he wouldn't swallow their bullshit.

On the plus side though, we do get paid an extra $100 per semester.