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.
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4 comments:
Mike,
tell me about this girl, i'm very interested. You'll be back in lovely Wisconsin before you know it, although i'm sure you'll want to be in England once you are. Oh and believe me i'm remembering to VOTE!!!!
Not that there is much to tell (when is there ever) but it'd be kind of hard to anyways cause your anonymous! :P
I voted for you.
A funny thing about Nader is the fact that he wouldn't get as far as he does without republican support. They help him because he takes away a percentage of the democratic vote.
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