Your Favorite Lush

http://sefora.org/wp-content/uploa…

An Open Letter to the American People

This year's presidential election is among the most significant in our nation's history. The country
urgently needs a visionary leader who can ensure the future of our traditional strengths in science
and technology and who can harness those strengths to address many of our greatest problems:
energy, disease, climate change, security, and economic competitiveness.

We are convinced that Senator Barack Obama is such a leader, and we urge you to join us in
supporting him.

During the administration of George W. Bush, vital parts of our country's scientific enterprise
have been damaged by stagnant or declining federal support. The government's scientific
advisory process has been distorted by political considerations. As a result, our once dominant
position in the scientific world has been shaken and our prosperity has been placed at risk. We
have lost time critical for the development of new ways to provide energy, treat disease, reverse
climate change, strengthen our security, and improve our economy.

We have watched Senator Obama's approach to these issues with admiration. We especially
applaud his emphasis during the campaign on the power of science and technology to enhance
our nation's competitiveness. In particular, we support the measures he plans to take – through
new initiatives in education and training, expanded research funding, an unbiased process for
obtaining scientific advice, and an appropriate balance of basic and applied research – to meet
the nation's and the world's most urgent needs.

Senator Obama understands that Presidential leadership and federal investments in science and
technology are crucial elements in successful governance of the world's leading country. We
hope you will join us as we work together to ensure his election in November.

I've been hearing a lot of talk from my friends heard Ron Paul blame the current mortgage crisis on the CRA (Community Reinvestment Act) by "forcing banks to lend to people who normally would be rejected as bad credit risks."

While there are many things Ron Paul hits on the head, in this case, its just an example of his extreme dislike of any regulations and he scores off mark. The right-wing pundits have taken this and run with it as an excuse to attack liberals.

There is little evidence to support this. This article gives an excellent summary of the CRA and it's history.

http://www.prospect.org/cs/article…

FTA
In late 2004, the Bush administration announced plans to sharply weaken CRA regulations, pulling small and mid-sized banks out from under the law's toughest standards. Yet sub-prime lending continued, and even intensified -- at the very time when activity under CRA had slowed and the law had weakened.

Those of you whom did not not this, as you don't ever see me any more.

My wife and I are expecting a son. He will is due 11/15/2008.
His name will be Connor, and were both very excited.

Figured some of you might wonder what ever happened to me...

Writing code gets to be very hard in the later afternoon.

Meh...I need a brain break.

My wife and I are in Vegas on our honeymoon
We walked by a place that offered to give us free show tickets if we watch a demo for 2 hours.
Note : This is a huge scam. I've never seen such high end pressure salesmen.

We were both tired, and before we left we agreed to pay $16,000 for a timeshare every other year.
After all, it seemed like a great deal and we were offered 6 free vacation packages.
What could go wrong?

Lucky for us, federal protection gives five days to change your mind if you send a certified letter.
Those are calender days kids, not business days.
We also had to cancel the credit cards we used.

So the summary is, don't ever go to one of those demos.
Were both very good about avoiding bullshit, but these guys were pros.

Does anyone here use AIM, Yahoo, MSN or Gtalk?

Nothing is quite like getting to work before any of the lights are on.
Nothing beats showing up and seeing that at 12:45am all your servers crashed.
And your blackberry was not working properly so you never knew it.

Time to start putting the pieces back together...

Dragoncon owned.
Much fun was had over the weekend.

I just typed this in a program I wrote.
The comments, when taken out of context, are quite entertaining.
They would make for a good T-shirt slogan.

foreach (@childs) {    # Reaping your children is
  waitpid($_, 0);           # very important to prevent
  }                                   # zombies.

I just got my hands on a copy of this game again.
It runs like a champ on the new Mac.

I strongly suspect this game will be just as good the 2nd time around.