Defiantone.com

Sarah Palin has only been under intense public scrutiny for a few days and boy oh boy she’s a goldmine of fun. First off, she is an advocate of abstinence ONLY education. Young adults are going to get into trouble and have sex. In an environment where abstinence is the only option and owning a condom would result in severe punishment, they will often use no protection at all. When this happens children are bound to follow. Don’t believe me? Lets take a look at her pregnant teenage daughter - or the already born offspring of her other daughter. Her 17 year old daughter is a fan of the sauce - Great huh?

She’s also a gun advocate - good for her - creepy for America.

Remember, if John McCain dies, she gets to run the country. I like John McCain but I really don’t like his VP choice.

Palin for VP as a white woman. Obama for President as a black man. One of these two will find themselves in one of the highest (or highest) positions in the planet. I’m proud to see that my country has finally found a little diversity in our politics because we’ve had it in our country for quite some time. Some of this, particularly the pick of a woman as a VP candidate, could be construed as an entirely political choice in order to pick up the remaining Clinton vote. The talking heads are going to have fun with this one - this race got incredibly interesting. Time to do some Googling and find more about the Governor from Alaska.

It turned out that the civilians are working on Friday so I actually had one extra day of work this week. I find out about my extra shift eight hours before I was to be at work so it wasn’t that bad of a deal. They were, apparently, unsure if I was going to show up and didn’t know what to do. Someone suggested that they call me - what a novel idea. My mind has been in vacation mode since I left work yesterday so I’ve just been goofing off - yep - goofing off. I’ve had some time to snag a couple of news snippets - the excerpts don’t tell the whole story but most are amusing enough to stand on their own.

The finale of a political convention is a little like a wedding: the bride is always radiant, and the nominee is always stirring. In an unusual turn, even Senator John McCain, the expected Republican nominee, felt compelled to pay tribute to Mr. Obama’s historic milestone with a television advertisement congratulating his opponent on “a job well done.” (No good ad goes unpunished: after Mr. McCain’s spot on CNN came a Mutual of Omaha commercial about retirement plans for the elderly, and another promising to reverse baldness.)

I love irony

John McCain’s campaign is keeping a close eye on Tropical Storm Gustav as it heads towards the Gulf Coast and Republicans begin the trek to St. Paul, Minnesota, to nominate McCain for president.

Gee - it would be a shame to have people correlate your nomination with Bush and the debacle that was Katrina. It’s no wonder you’re worried about the path of the storm.

With a day’s program that included music from Jennifer Hudson, Sheryl Crow and Stevie Wonder (”a personal highlight for me,” CNN’s Wolf Blitzer said), it was a bit of an Obamapalooza. Joe Biden showed up unannounced — to jam, as it were. Perhaps he just wanted to feel what it was like to address a crowd of 84,000.

Ouch - that’s just mean.

This time, like before, the argument is that labels would like to sell the albums as a unit instead of singles, and the new part is that some of them are beginning to bypass the iTunes behemoth distribution machine. Apple insists that labels can’t sell the whole album as a unit, and has also stuck, for the most part, to its 99 cent-per-song philosophy, which labels have fought against.

The music industry wants to get back to the selling 10-14 songs at a time while only giving you two songs you’ll actually like. Great business plan!

Eleven beheaded bodies were dumped close to a graveyard outside a sleepy southern city on Thursday in the latest shocking crime in Mexico’s vicious drug war.

I read the eleven beheaded bodies and thought - its gotta be drugs. You might as well call me Carnac the Magnificent.

Defense attorneys filed 95 letters in court Wednesday night as part of a bid to get Abramoff out of prison early. They describe him as a humbled, changed man whose family is suffering and nearly broke after his first 18 months in prison… …In prison, Abramoff has focused on studying Judaism and helping fellow inmates, friends said. He has taught classes entitled “Parenting from a Distance,” “Modern Marvels,” “Cinema Studies,” and “The Holocaust in Films,” his attorneys said. He is currently teaching a motion picture theory class.

Almost anyone trying to get out of jail early finds religion. I have a feeling Bush is going to give him a last minute pardon - its a shame - the guy deserves to spend his time in jail. They should give a fair trial to the West Memphis Three before they even think of dealing with this guys crap.

After Adrian Beltre’s walk-off homer in the bottom of the 11th inning Monday, the Mariners went completely nuts. Winning pitcher R.A. Dickey told The Seattle Times, “We celebrated just like we would have celebrated if we were in a pennant race.” Nothing like the manufactured excitement that comes from reducing a division lead to … 30 1/2 games

Our team is… what’s the word? Horrendous

The Lindsay Lohan sweating an athlete thing isn’t brand spanking earth shattering news. She’s already discussed, in a rather profane manner, how attractive she thinks Michael Phelps is, and the now, she may or may not be infatuated with a certain Chicago Bears quarterback. That’s right, Kyle Orton, you are pretty, pretty, pretty attractive. Also spied dancing with an attractive blonde at Crimson Lounge: new Bears quarterback Kyle Orton - dubbed ‘’super-hot” by Lohan, Ronson and Lauper, who all admired the NFL player’s dance-floor moves.

Last year he looked like a child molester with his molestache - this year he’s attractive?

“Gentlemen, I’m the last person to disagree with you on the chicken hawk, lying coward, sexist, racist, needs a face-lift, whore stuff, but you really need to re-cut this track,” Olbermann said addressing the Avengers last week on his MSNBC show “Countdown.” “Nobody’s life should be threatened, not even in the hyperbole of the moment. Beside, you are rappers. You have better ethics than Bill O’Reilly does. Live up to them. Don’t live down to him. Word to your mother.”

Way to go Olbermann

Its eight o’clock and I want to watch TV. The Olympics, along with some obscure and nearly unwatchable sports, are gone and back is the regular television schedule. Unfortunately, on the second night on Olympics free television I’ve found that everything that I want to watch has been preempted by the Democratic National Convention. Hillary is jabbering at the moment about blue collared Americans - she hasn’t really mentioned wall street employees and members of the financial sector - how odd for a Democrat to make such a major gaffe. Uh oh… here comes the let’s think about the children line. What a trite and tired line - I love politics but come on. This is why I love the internet. I can get a full transcript of this speech in a couple of hours when I’ll have the time to properly dissect it. Most of us are only watching this because there is nothing else on at the moment - we really don’t care. In fact, the overwhelming majority of us are already decided and only a minority can be considered swing voters. As a swing voter I think they’re making a mistake. They really don’t want to piss off a potential voter by preempting my regular television schedule. It’s time to pack it up DNC - go to bed - I’ve got some TV to watch.

My opinion hasn’t changed in the past few months. I think Bluecoat is a horribly coded web filter that does a poor job of characterizing content. Much to my surprise, they have tweaked the algorithm and I’ve seen some noticable changes. First off, they no longer categorically block websites that have the word blog in the URL. Yes, somebody out there heard the clamouring from the masses (or the screaming minorities as it may be in this case) and made some changes to the what they define as a personal page. Surprisingly, my website is no longer considered a personal page. To think about it, I think they might be right. If I write about something thats going on with me its often centered around something else going on in the world. I rarely write directly about me aside from whatever asprirations I may have in life. My website is chock full of right off the top of my head uncensored goodness - if you’re in to that kind of stuff. If you’re not, why the heck haven’t you navigated away…. at this moment 9/10 readers will have left this page to find something else. Good for them - thats the joy of the internet.

I still loathe bluecoat - and I may never stop. I’m just glad they decided to tweak the code.

I’m an enthusiastic fan of the Daily Show and I watch it whenever I have an opportunity. The writing is sharp, the jokes are funny, the satire is thick, and they always hit the nail right on the head. Last year, Americans voted for their most admired journalist - Stewart came in 4th. He does the self proclaimed “fake news” and he was voted #4. I’m surprised he didn’t rank higher. Seemingly absent was Couric - I guess there really is something to say about the Neilsen ratings. The NY Times has an interesting article about how the Daily Show has become a major news source for political news. If you want political news that lampoons both sides without fear you’ve got to stay up late or program your Tivo. It will be worth your time.

Political correctness has been on a rampage for years and it’s time to give it a rest. Giants of industry have been sued for their description or portrayal of minorities or individuals with disabilities. It’s high time that these people stop wearing their hearts on their sleeves and start growing a backbone. What has drawn my ire today? The Down Syndrome Association of Los Angeles and the Disability Rights Coalition is up in arms about the upcoming Ben Stiller flick ‘Tropic Thunder.’

Tropic Thunder

In the movie, Stiller’s character makes reference to a movie where he portrayed a retard in a fake movie called Simple Jack. (note: at one point there was a spoof movie site - the hubub has caused someone to think twice and remove it) The coalition isn’t too happy with Stiller’s portrayal. It’s a shame when people are born with disabilities and it downright sucks - but - the movie wasn’t making fun of disabilities. There were making light of how actors will attempt to gain favor with Oscar and Emmy voters by taking a challenging role of a disabled person. Has anyone ever seen Rainman?

Their demands are quite extensive - they want free screenings, public apologies, film editing, removal of specific film promotions, specifically created trailers, a national educational and advertising campaign, and a film studio summit.

This situation is just ridiculous. Feel free to read all of the gory details at Film School Rejects

I’ll give you a second to let all of that sink in. You’re probably wondering what I was when I first heard about this - uhh…. what happened to free speech? They aren’t exactly yelling “FIRE” in a crowded theater. People aren’t being hurt by the movie. If you don’t like it, don’t watch it.

This particular post was not inspired by some random urge to write about the state that for the longest time I knew as my home. In fact, I’m only writing about Iowa because someone else did all of the hard work for me.

The Iowa State Fair is probably going full swing right now and it’s quite an event if you should ever happen to be stuck in the midwest in the hottest (and muggiest) part of the year. The fair, as far as I know, is probably the largest and most iconic in America - I may be incorrect but I’m not going to bother a google search to find out if I’m wrong - I’m going to rely on someone leaving a comment and pointing out the error of my ways. What you may not know about the state fair, aside from where you can find Iowa on a US map (when someone is unable to name a state based upon the shape alone I get annoyed - don’t they teach geography anymore? I can probably still name all of the state capitals to a 80% accuracy and I doubt that I will ever travel to Montpelier (the capital of VT)), is that they love to hold contests of all sorts - some of them quite bizarre. If you’re traveling to the fair from the east via I-80 you’re bound to pass another Iowa oddity - the worlds largest truck stop

I love Iowa - I just don’t think I could live there and maintain my sanity - I do like to visit when I’ve got a chance - They have great pies (thank you Amana colony pie lady), great vegetables (hooray for corn!), fantastic thunderstorms (the damn mountains greatly diminish the odds of thunderstorms in this part of the country), and…. oh yeah, most of my family still resides in Iowa.

I caught an interesting article about vengeance today where they mentioned an interesting experiment called the ultimatum game. Here is what wikipedia had to say about it

The ultimatum game is an experimental economics game in which two players interact to decide how to divide a sum of money that is given to them. The first player proposes how to divide the sum between themselves, and the second player can either accept or reject this proposal. If the second player rejects, neither player receives anything. If the second player accepts, the money is split according to the proposal. The game is played only once, and anonymously, so that reciprocation is not an issue.

I’ve really got to wonder what would happen if I were to play this game with people that I know. Imagine if I came up to you and told you I had $10,000. I offered to give you $50 with you having that knowledge that we’ve got to agree on the amount or we both get nothing. I wonder how many people would turn me down because they felt that the offer was unfair.

Economists found that the outcome of this game changes based upon with the background of those who play it. People from poorer, and less educated, backgrounds would be more likely to reject any offer believing that they deserved more. Feel free to check out the article at the NY Times.

So - let me put it to you - my two readers. If I offered you $50, while I kept $9950, would you take it or would you reject the offer entirely and walk away with nothing?

We’ve seen the debate over evolution rage for years and often brought into the forefront by conservtive and liberal minds alike. We, as a race, are still unsure as to how we really arrived here. Were we created by God? Did the big bang bring us all into existence? Did God cause the big bang and thus all of the subsequent events?

While we may not know how we arrived here we cannot deny that evolution is a force that is still changing the planet around us. Darwin didn’t discovery the theory of evolution - things simply evolve. What I didn’t know was how fast things could actually evolve. I caught an interesting article at the NY Times about evolution that has occured over the last 30 years. Scientific data is amazing because we can figure out quite a bit if we happen to get the correct measurements. Nobody can really tell me how warm it was at 12:13pm on 4 Dec 1401 on the top of Mt. Rainier because there was nobody to take a measurement, but, someone can tell me how the beak of a bird species has changed over the last 30 years due to the data that was collected.

It’s quite an interesting article because I figured it took quite a few generations (decades) before we would see any measurable change - boy was I wrong.