Life, News, and Swedish Monarchies

Sooooooooooo, I finished rough draft numero uno of my 8-10 page paper for World War Two in Europe so I am taking a break now for the night to give a long entry with lots of nicely planted links to various things you might want to check out.
First off, the lively, lovely, can we get it over with already(?!?) elections. I was pointed to a curious site called Slate where I found one of the coolest things. An election scorecard (please note the one linked to here is for the morning of October 29th, to find the latest one, go to the Slate frontpage, then Campaign 2004 and look for the newest scorecard in the list of articles given) is given for the nation. Now currently they have Kerry ahead for the first time since I started looking. This is amazingly part of Wisconsin. Never thought our paltry few electoral votes would count for much but apparently the cheese-heads may help decide the election! Scary thought there eh?
What actually makes me wonder more though is when you look at the map notice just how much of the country is red. Yup, you got it, well over half (about 30) states are solidly for Bush. This means if Kerry wins territorily he will have taken it with a small chunk of America. Let's face it, Bush controls the Midwest, the Great Plains and the South. All Kerry has is the East Coast and the West Coast. Does it feel like a gyp to those of us in the middle that he has much less territory that wants him? Granted the land doesn't vote but well if Wyoming, the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas would have a few more kids we wouldn't see a Democrat in the White House for decades. Funny thing I noticed too was that Alaska is completely in for Bush. I guess the Alaskans don't mind his enviromental policy. Funny thing too since it's supposed to be really bad or something right? Then again maybe there is a secret Russo-Canuck Alliance who want to annex them and they would prefer a strong leader.
Who are did I vote for you may be asking? I think I said already so go look. Right now I would probably vote differently so I am hoping things work out well however they turn out. I really have no clue. Irony cannot be stated enough my first presidential election and I don't like either of the two canidates the two parties have provided. Where is John McCain? By the way, why do we only get two viable canidates and why is Ralph Nader so evil? All the pro-Kerry people actually bash his running simply because it hurts them. Apparently if you don't help the party (whichever of the two it may be) then you are anti-American, yadda, yadda, yadda.

POLITICAL CRAP DONE!
Well sorta, apparently Osama bin Laden is alive and well. I wish him the best and hope he can personally speak to some of our US soldiers during rifle practice on how they can help make America safer. The nice thing is he can help out and be a rifle target at the same time. Who says he doesn't care? He gets on tv and tells us that both canidates are dopes (which we already know but nice to see that even radical Muslim terrorists can see it) and that we need something better plus he helps our soldiers by giving a moving target to aim at. What a guy! And I love the turban too, very classy :D

Meanwhile if your head is in the ground you've probably missed the most important stories of the week!

Apple has announced new iPods this week! Specifically the iPod Photo! They have increased battery life (12 and 15 hours) and huge memories (40 and 60 GB) and massive price tags (600 and 700 dollars). Plus color screens, did I mention the color screens? If I didn't they have pretty color screens. Now my poor iPod has a battery life of about 3 hours left in it when fully charged. Yes that's down from the meager 4 it had when I got here. Canti's dying slowly but surely poor little guy. So I have been keeping an eye on the iPods. Whilst this is wonderful news it'd be more wonderful if it cost less so I didn't spend nearly half what I spent to purchase my iMac! Over half if you count the costs for my first iPod. There is also the U2 iPod which aside from the deal to get $50 off on the entire U2 collection (whose total price remains a mystery so as to whether this is a good deal or not is a mystery) does not offer much to buy it. It costs more as well so not real interesting. I await hope that the older original type iPods go down in price so I can get a 12 hour battery lifer for under $200. Doubt I will get that lucky but I can pray.

Star Wars fans please take note this paragraph is for you. If you wasted money on a Hyperspace subscription (not me!) then you will get to see the Episode 3 teaser trailer on November 4th. The rest of America and Canada: if you go see The Incredibles on November 5th you will see the teaser trailer there. People who are too cheap to pay just to see that first little trailer (me!) you can see it online at StarWars.com for free on November 8th. See the SciFiWire link or the teaser poster link here. It's still more then 6 months away but time is ticking down!

I finally used the Tube on Monday. Probably right after I posted the my last entry. I used the newer Jubilee line so they sadly didn't say "Mind the gap" because there was no gap. I was sad. I may have to go in search of that because it amuses me greatly.
Otherwise this week has been totally focused on attempting to do homework. This was greatly hindered when I churned out half the paper mentioned above and then found out that because Mertz doesn't actually help much even tho he assigns us outlines to do, etc that nearly everything I had could not be used and as a result had to start from scratch. Plus we only have one book as a source so I need to find some more sources (mostly non-internet because like many Profs he does not trust it) which is rather hard since in London every library but the smallest crappy ones require enough Letters of Recomendations from Important People (ie the Space Pope, God, members of the Swedish Royal Family, Reverend Coaches, and others whom are so important I am not allowed to even mention their names in this blog). As a result my research abilites are limited (I don't have my super library at home or the admittedly decent library at UWSP to use). Life is tough for researching over here and frankly this is the first time I have had to write many papers at all in college. One does not need to do much of that when you program computers! So I am going through an interesting time academically. Hopefully I can pull out a higher GPA then a B but I am worried at this rate.

Much excitement as White-Wolf will be releasing Exalted: The Fair Folk in just about a month. I really wish we could get Nephilpal to leak us some more juicy tidbits. He is after all writing both on the Fair Folk and Alchemicals (granting that there are NDA enforcing hamsters of death, with death-ray lasers attached to their little heads to keep him from spilling any Alchemical goodies, all he can do is mess with our heads).

Is there more I can write now? Prolly. However I should stop as this is incredibly longish already. I needed a good vent. Life is stressful here and I don't have anyone to walk with. Also in violating my original plan of not trying to find a girl here although the girl in question seems to be more then committed to me not failing (at least that is my pessimistic outlook, let's face it I haven't a clue at all what she thinks!) Paper writing sucks. The EU is a mess, there's a general election insanity which seems to grip all of Europe now as well, and we've discovered that Titan is one giant combustable Molotov cocktail. Which makes me wonder, if we drop Hyugens into it, will we cause the entire surface to ignite or is there no oxygen in any significant form to allow for that? It would really such if we whiped out this great scientific wonder (and great source for volatiles in the future, I've been reading Jovian Chronicles some more, I could go onto that too if I wanted) by the dropping of our first probe there? Tune in Christmas Eve for me on that!

Anyhow I miss Wisconsin, it feels very Octoberish here which makes me rather homesick. At least I have nice parks to walk in (I am in love with them if you haven't already noticed) if noone to walk with. I miss all you folks and Eric you better be ready for that first Tuesday night I am back because I am gonna school you all in Mario Kart.

That's all folks.

Really.

50 hours in Belfast

Spent the weekend in Belfast. Despite the general paranoia of people in this group it is an absolutely safe city. Lowest crime rate on the continent (wonder why eh?). The murals were beautiful and I got really lucky when I took a turn off Shankhill Rd and found some of the more famous murals. Sadly didn't make a lucky turn like that off Falls Rd. The Botanic Gardens were wonderful too although I in general love parks and finding another one was a good deal for me. The weather was fantastic, usually it rains alot there like everywhere else in the UK but Friday was cloudy and Saturday was sunny. Rather chilly but that just made it feel like home. Actually the entire city gave a feel of the midwest, maybe a little less well off but they are much more down to earth there then in London. I loved being able to walk down streets and know their history (troubled as it is). Anyhow if you go to Europe don't discount Belfast, Northern Ireland is a wonderful place.

Legality

While those of you who are pro-Kerry may wholly support any efforts to covert people to your cause this article in the Guardian rather frightens me. Now I am not quite sure how old this so maybe it already made major news in the US, maybe not, but anyhow. I'm just going to copy what I wrote to someone in hopes of clearing things up a bit.

This article
( http://guardian.assets.digivault.co.uk/clark_county/ ) is an effort by the newspaper to get its readership to persuade Americans in Clark County, Ohio to vote how the readers want. Each reader who signs up gets the e-mail of one registered voter of Clark County, Ohio who they can then e-mail. There are several links from that page also arguing why Europe (and the rest of the world) should get as much a say as the US.
Now I've got a couple questions here, some of them somewhat disturbing for me: First, why are the e-mail addresses for listed voters available to the entire world to access? (I will grant my knowledge on laws in this area in very limitied, but if the Guardian can get it, who else can?) Secondly, when did Europe start believing that they have as much say in US elections as the US? I have heard people over here actually say they wish they could vote for us to make sure we vote the right way. I personally believe if you voted, you've done the right thing you cannot vote right or wrong, your duty is simply to vote!

I probably shouldn't be writing this stuff at 2 AM but it bother Jeff too, so it ain't just me (maybe just us tho). For better feelings read the previous entry and for those of you who made comments I responded see that entry.

Gray and Green

Walked through St. James', Green, and Hyde Parks today. London has such wonderful green spaces, I will surely miss them for years to come. They make me rather nostalgic for when I was a little kid wondering around state parks in Wisconsin and Minnesota (especially one very misty, foggy, and cloudy morning). If you ever go to London you must take some time to check out the parks, they are fantastic. I guess I am just in one of those sombre happy moods I haven't been in for awhile. Everything just seemed to focus it today though, maybe the only thing which could have made it better was snow but that doesn't happen real often. Hope everyone managed to get as nice a day out of today as me, if not go out and walk in Schmeekle (or whatever greenery you local affords you) and enjoy some peace and quiet.

Measure for Measure

I voted today. Now most of you have to wait til November 2nd but you sure as heck better vote. If you miss because you are out playing cricket and watching (real) football and do not you should be ashamed and I hope the bowler sends a wicked googly your way! :P Anyhow exercise your constitutional rights before the Democratic and Republic parties take them away altogether.
It exists. Enough said. Next time sing the whole song.
A curiousity, have people been getting my Gmails? We have been having browser issues on this end, John's IE being so thoroughly ridden with spy,ad,and pornware that it is virtually unusable, we switched to Fire Fox which has had issues with UWSP e-mail, the tendency being to forward messages and deleting their replies. For instance I sent a survey to a couple people which I think UWSP mail replaced with the original. I am fairly positive I am not Allison I am not good looking enough and I'm the wrong sex if you got that one (and it was messed up as I suspect). I use Gmail pretty religiously now but I am not sure whether UWSP Spamblocker knows I am not a spammer. Right that was a preponderously long and confusing paragraph.
So any news over here? Well my family is visiting this week so I we had a mini-reunion over here. That is really about it. Just the regular old routine. Jeff is shaving using the broken bathroom mirror he "borrowed". It's cooler then ever temp. wise. I have been trying to get out and do stuff with people, mostly within our group cause I am still not really extroverted enough to get to know other people.
It looks like I might have an apartment whence I return to Point so hopefully Twism's finances will hold thru so all I have to do is come back and sign the papers and hand over some money from my already thinned bank accounts. Really hope that works.
Anyhow consider this a randomly pasted (which reminds me, I had a pasty Allison) together attempt to update the two people who occasionally read this blog. Adoring fans or lost websurfers you ask? I'll leave that for the philosphers to decide.
Try tiramisu chocolate truffles, your life will be better for it. Or read 1st Corinthians. Or both.