Political Ramblings

Just 2 more weeks until the library's new network/website/catalog goes live... it's getting busier, but I still love it. Maybe addiction to change will get the better of me after all the excitement is over... but then, I'll be tweaking and adding things on the website for months after this.

Even more of "Go Mike Huckabee!" than the last post: He's won the last two events (FOX debate last night, American Family Council conference on Saturday) without anyone else even coming close. (Ok, so Mitt Romney paid people to vote for him, and Ron Paul once again assembled his army of cyber-spammers, but Huckabee wins in a fair debate. If only there ever were such a thing...) But, there have been more donations on his site today than there were in the last week. I can't wait for next week's poll numbers after all the attention has time to go produce effects there. Oh, and perhaps even more importantly: Chuck Norris supports Huckabee! Clearly, nobody should even consider any other candidate anymore.

I'm still reading "Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming". This is an incredible book.

If we claim our concern lies with people dying from climate effects, as in the European heat wave in 2003, we have to ask ourselves why we are primarily thinking about implementing expensive CO2 cuts, which at best leave future communities warming slightly less quickly, still causing ever more heat deaths. Moreover, as warming will indeed prevent even more cold deaths, we have to ask why we are thinking about an expensive policy that will actually leave more people dead.

With Kyoto we can avoid about 140,000 malaria deaths over the century. At one-sixtieth the cost, we can tackle malaria directly and avoid eighty-five million deaths. For every time we save one person from malaria death through climate policies, the same money could have saved 36,000 people through better antimalaria policies. Which should be our first mission?

And, shockingly enough, Al Gore's logic is not flawless. He loves to say "If Greenland and a certain ice shelf in Antarctica slide off and melt in the ocean, water levels will rise by 40 feet." This is generally followed by horrible, awful, emotional pictures of the water levels in Florida and California. What he fails to recognize is that the Antarctic ice cap is at its highest volume of ice in recorded history. He also doesn't really support his theory either. Anyone can say "If all of Antarctica slides into the ocean, water levels will go up 400 feet." That doesn't make it a reality.

And, whaddya know, yet another political remark: We played with some numbers in my American Government class this morning and figured out that the average taxpayer would have to pay $20,000 every year for the government to break even, and that government spending has about doubled every decade for the last fifty years. Spooky.

Fall

Fall break was this weekend. I worked for 30 hours. That is all. Oh, and I went to the Career Center for an "Advisory Committee Meeting". There were only five people there (including Mr. Wright and Brian) but it was great to go back and say hello to assorted random people.

My single Thursday class was canceled, and I have no lab on Friday. This means that I may actually have some free time this weekend, since I didn't during the two days of break. Mmmm, free time. Oh wait, maybe I forgot what that is.

In other news, only 3 weeks and 2 days left until I need to have the new library website complete. It's been a great project so far, and I've had the chance to change a lot of things (mostly behind the scenes code stuff) and add things that I've wanted to see there for a long time. (I've now created a blogging system, a wiki system, RSS feeds generated from the blogging system, and other goodies.) This is probably the first big deadlined project I've ever worked on, and it's fun. So, no complaints there. Coding for 11.5 hours on Monday was a bit brain-frying, though.

I watched the Republic presidential candidate last night. Most of it was either vague, confusing, or both. I got a couple laughs out of it, though... like Mitt Romney's lawyers who he'll consult if he ever wants to declare war on Iran. The debate didn't change my thoughts (Go Huckabee!) though it was annoying that the four major candidates got probably 75% of the debate time, and the other four less major candidates weren't left with much time to say what I think are some very valuable opinions. Huckabee is now on Rasmussen Reports' list of major Republican candidates, though. So, getting closer. It is useful to point out that he's the only one who has been steadily increasing.

And, I think today is officially the beginning of Fall. It's 60 degrees, and wonderful outside. I could live in this weather all year. (Minus the ragweed allergies.)

Apple

Ok, so I don't claim to know a lot about how the stock market works...

But, I would tend to think that Apple's stock price doubling in the last year is a good thing.

Also, their market cap is $133 billion right now. Microsoft is $277 billion. This means that financially, Apple is now half as big as Microsoft.

Getting closer...