Archive for August, 2008
- Jeff Emanuel has a detailed and — IMHO — rather devastating “tale of the tape” comparing Sarah Palin and Barack Obama (NOTE: the Redstate.com site appears to be currently [8/31, 1550 mdt] down/overloaded.)
- Suitably Flip has an interesting graphic regarding the two VP candidates.
- Uncle Jumbo over at Blackfive shows that Palin’s “Commander-in-Chief” bona fides are nothing to sneeze at — the Alaska National Guard is the first line of missile defense for the United States (hat tip to Stubborn Facts).
- Harvey over at IMHO shows yet another way how the Left’s dismissing of Palin backfires on Obama (e.g., “I think she’s far too inexperienced to be in this position. I’m all for a woman in the White House, but not one who hasn’t done anything to deserve it.” becomes “I think he’s far too inexperienced to be in this position. I’m all for an African-American in the White House, but not one who hasn’t done anything to deserve it.”)
Palin in comparison
S. Weasel made the poster to the left; I may try to get a larger version to stick onto our car.
Also, because they deserve more attention, two items which I tacked onto my previous post plus a few new ones:
Last — but far from least — is the Red State Update commenting on Sarah Palin:
Hat tip to American Digest.
Heh. Ain’t we got fun? ..bruce w..
Woot! It’s Gov. Sarah “Barracuda” Palin!
[series of updates below]
Palin has been my second choice for GOP VP, after Condoleezza Rice. This is, IMHO, a great move by McCain; what may make it truly brilliant is if McCain makes the “one term and out” pledge at the GOP convention. That way, electing McCain-Palin gives Palin an almost certain shot at the GOP nomination in 2012 — which would probably kill off Hilary Clinton’s chances. It also makes the GOP convention next week actually interesting.
[UPDATED 10:05 MDT]
I see that the Left and the MSM (but I repeat myself…) have already started the “no experience” drumbeat on Palin, which is going to backfire. Obama has been a Senator for four years and has no executive experience (unless he really wants to bring up the Bill Ayers connection again); Biden has likewise been a legislator pretty much all his life. Palin has served both on a local government level (something she can point to as a plus, given Obama’s rhetoric last night about being a community activist) and for two years as governor of not only the largest state (geographically), but the only state that borders two foreign countries — one of which is Russia, fer cryin’ out loud. Tell me how much either Obama or Biden have had to deal with Russia on a government-to-government basis.
[UPDATED 1027 MDT]
OK, this just keeps getting better: her nickname as Governor is “Sarah Barracuda”. Apparently she first had that nickname in high school, but it’s come back during her administration because of all the special interest groups and corrupt politicians she’s crushed.
[UPDATED 1044 MDT]
S. Weasel (one of my favorite bloggers and a hell of an artist — yes, she did all those drawings you see on her web site) pretty much sums up my own reaction:
[John McCain] did it. He showed me something. Sarah Palin is distilled essence of awesome.
Lifetime member of the NRA. Flies her own float plane. Eats mooseburgers, kills own moose first. Nickname in high school: Barracuda. Former commercial fisherman. Went to college on money she won in a beauty contest.
Her husband is an Eskimo. Dude. Her husband is an Eskimo.
Her main claim to fame is fighting corruption in her own party — which means she won her elections in defiance of the state Republican party. She’s the one who killed the Bridge to Nowhere. So, yes, this is a sort of maverick-y pick, but in a good way. I’m psyched.
I now have a reason to vote, and a ticket I can get excited about. Haven’t felt that way, oh, since Giuliani cratered.
[UPDATED 1509 MDT]
Craig Ferguson — my favorite late-night talk show host — had this communication from Sarah Palin:
Hat tip to The Jawa Report.
Also some Little Known Facts about Sarah Palin, with a hat tip to Ace of Spades.
[UPDATED 08/30/08 - 1213 MDT]
Jeff Emanuel has a detailed and — IMHO — rather devastating “tale of the tape” comparing Sarah Palin and Barack Obama. Go read it. (NOTE: the Redstate.com site appears to be currently [8/31, 1550 mdt] down/overloaded.)
In the meantime, Suitably Flip has an interesting graphic regarding the two VP candidates. ..bruce..
Rating Obama’s speech
All in all, I thought it a very powerful, well-delivered speech. He is, without a doubt, the best orator that the Democrats have put forward since JFK; he is, I think, more polished than Reagan, though Reagan knew how to be folksy without sounding either stupid or condescending.
I thought his attacks against McCain were effective (I’ll let others critique whether they’re accurate), but I do think he slipped big time with this statement:
If you don’t have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from.
Obama has been in the Senate for 4 years and doesn’t have much of a record prior to that. I expect this line to show up in McCain ads, pointing out who has a record and who doesn’t.
The domesitic policy part of Obama’s speech had me hearing cash registers in my head (”cha-ching!”) for each new proposal he mad. Beyond that, I have serious questions whether he can enact — in a recognizable form — any of these policies, especially with a Democratic Congress. Bill Clinton made very similar promises in 1992 and then had a disastrous first two years — with a Democratic Congress — so much so that the Republicans gained control of the House in 1994.
The foreign policy portion was better, though given that we now have more support from France and Germany than we did a few years ago, I’m not sure what the basis of his “restore respect” comments are. I will frankly admit that — with a son (Jon) serving in Iraq and a nephew (Darren) most likely head to Afghanistan in a few months — this passage made me tear up:
The times are too serious, the stakes are too high for this same partisan playbook. So let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain. The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and Independents, but they have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a Red America or a Blue America - they have served the United States of America.
Against all odds (and my own misgivings), the stadium venue worked — even the Grecian columns. It was a profoundly effective setting.
Setting aside my own policy and political preferences, I would rate the acceptance speech as a 5 out of 5, simply because I’m not sure what more Obama could have done to fire up the Democratic base, reach out to independents, and leave an amazing sets of sound bites and images for the whole country to ponder. Plus, having most of the mainstream media in the tank for him, Obama won’t face a lot of critical analysis over what he said and what he proposes. I suspect Obama may go over 50% in the polls this weekend, and McCain has his work cut out for him. ..bruce..
McCain head fake
This is wishful thinking on my part, but if McCain really wanted to steal Obama’s thunder, I think he should pick Condoleezza Rice as his VP candidate. Frankly, I still like her better than any of the names currently bandied about, and it would capitalize on PUMA sentiments.
We’ll see.
[UPDATED 08/29/08 — 0645 MDT]
It appears that both Pawlenty and Romney are out — which I think is a good thing. McCain is really going to need to shake things up, and for that he needs a woman and/or a minority. I still hope it’s Rice, but there are rumblings that it may be Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska.
“Inside-Out”: IEEE presentation in Longmont (09/02/08)
On September 2nd, I’ll be speaking at a meeting of the Denver IEEE Reliability Society. It will be held at 5:30 pm in the Seagate Building in Longmont (CO), on Nelson Road between 75th Rd and Airport Rd.
Here’s my abstract of the talk:
INSIDE-OUT: Organizations too often treat software reliability as an ‘after the fact’ consideration, performing testing as a last step and then constraining it due to schedule and financial pressures. Webster will present a simple “inside-out” software lifecycle model where all software development activing (not just coding) takes place within a framework covering a broad spectrum of quality-related activities.
I’ll post the presentation slides here after the talk. ..bruce w..
Missing all the good stuff
Earlier this year, I was quite excited. Both the annual World Science Fiction Convention and the Democratic National Convention were coming to Denver (Sandra and I live in Parker, just outside of Denver) in the month of August. It would be a great two-fer!
As it turns out, I have been in Colorado for maybe 100 hours or so this August. I’ve been consulting full time on the East Coast, with a one-week break to attend our son’s wedding in Utah. I missed WorldCon and I’m missing the DNC. Heck, I even missed the four (harmless) tornadoes that touched down in and around Parker on Sunday.
But, hey, it’s work. ..bruce w..
Latest Baseline column up
My latest Baseline column is now up:
Last week, I talked about some of the reasons why large organizations often reject the best solutions for a troubled IT project: fear, pride, budget, and the ever-present internal politics. This week, as promised, I will talk about what it takes to champion the right solution. I can’t guarantee that you’ll succeed, but you will have a better shot at it.
Go read the rest of the column. In the meantime, I’ll start posting more pitfalls here. ..bruce..
New Baseline column up
I have a new Baseline column up on the tendency of large organizations to reject the best solutions for a troubled IT project:
The consultants, usually with the help of the employees in the trenches, would use their time, effort, and expertise to analyze the system under development or in production. They would arrive at a clear, supportable, essential solution – technical, architectural, methodological, organizational, whatever. This would be presented to upper management…whereupon upper (or project) management would say, “No, we can’t do that.”
Sometimes, they would give no specific reason why the solution was not acceptable. Sometimes, they made it clear that it wasn’t the solution they wanted or that they felt was acceptable. If they did explain their rejection, it was usually in budgetary or political terms.
The investigating team would often then go back and look for an alternate (and less optimal) solution. If one was found, often that was rejected as well, and so on, often down to the least desirable solution. Barry [Glasco] said that he and another colleague, Chuck McCorvey, had gone through this so many times with one client that they joked about simply presenting the worst solution first, since it seemed to be typically the only solution the client would accept.
Go read the whole thing; comments are welcome here or there. ..bruce..
More quantum coolness
Yes, quantum entanglement is real, producing faster-than-light interactions at a distance:
After performing multiple tests on two entangled photons, physicists have yet again found that the photons seem to be communicating faster than the speed of light - at least 100,000 times faster. The researchers hope that their results might encourage theorists to come up with new explanations for the strange quantum mechanical effect.
The physicists, led by Nicolas Gisin from the University of Geneva, arranged their experiment by sending two photons down fiber optic cables to detectors in two Swiss villages located 18 km apart. Both photons started in Geneva, with one heading toward Satigny and the other toward Jussy. The study, which is published in Nature, builds on previous tests published a few months ago in Physical Review Letters.
When the researchers measured several properties of each photon at its destination, they found that the particles could instantly sense the other´s behavior without any known communication. Although this correlation obeys the laws of quantum mechanics, it seems to defy the nature of space and time, at least from humans´ everyday perspectives.
But here’s my favorite quote from the article:
“We think space and time are important because that´s the kind of monkeys we are,” he said.
I may adopt that as a motto. ..bruce..
Video o’ the day
OK, this is one of the most remarkable video I’ve watched in some time, on several levels. It’s funny; it’s politically relevant; the two characters are actually quite good at martial choreography; and it even has special effects:
Be warned that it’s a bit long (9 minutes), but worth watching. Hat tip to Ace of Spades. ..bruce w..