The New York Times performed brain scans on swing voters to gauge their reactions to the political candidates. Here’s some output:
“We found indications that Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Giuliani represent two sides of the same coin: Men show little interest in Mrs. Clinton initially but after watching her video they react positively. Women respond to her strongly at first, but their interest wanes after they watch her video.
With Mr. Giuliani, the reactions are reversed. Men respond strongly to his initial still photos, but this fades after they see his video. Women grow more engaged after watching his video.
This is evidence that swing voters’ responses change when they see these two candidates in action. For men, Mrs. Clinton is a pleasant surprise. For women, Mr. Giuliani has unexpected appeal. ”
Well, I say it’s about time and thank god. I hope to see more of this type of thing applied to consumer research and maybe even issue some ‘patriotism tests’. Because people hide things, you know. And they shouldn’t do that.
A new research project has shown that children can bond with robots.
“Eventually, the children seemed to care about the robot’s well being. They helped it up when it fell, and played “care-taking” games with it – most commonly, when QRIO’s batteries ran out of juice and it lay down, a toddler would come up and cover it with a blanket and say “night, night”. Altering QRIO’s behaviour also changed the children’s attitude towards the robot. When the researchers programmed QRIO to spend all its time dancing, the kids quickly lost interest. When the robot went back to its old self, the kids again treated it like a peer again.”
The theory is that eventually robots could be used as helpers for special-needs children. Just lay off the electric slide.
Who will guard the guards themselves? It’s Conspiracy Tuesday, and we have this item from Naomi Wolf, who is tracking the Bush administration’s ‘preparations’ for a national emergency. Apparently, they’re set on restricting people’s ability to travel, and not just internationally.
“Last week in Boston, while attending Bioneers by the Bay, I heard that one of the speakers for our event, an environmentalist named Gunter Pauli, was going to miss the time of his scheduled speech; he had been physically taken OFF THE PLANE by TSA agents and had to take a much later flight. More chillingly, the camerawoman doing my interview said that another well-known environmental writer found that his girlfriend was effectively `disappeared’ for three days as she sought to enter the US from Canada. Lisa Fithian, an anti-globalization activist, was denied entry across the Canadian border in 2001 and was offered the choice of turning back or being arrested.”
From a quoted post on DailyKos:
“The proposal … require[s] that travellers display their government-issued credentials not to government agents but to airline personnel (staff or contractors), whenever the DHS orders the airline to demand them. But since the orders to demand ID of [certain passengers] will be given to the airline in secret, … travellers will have no way to verify whether … demands for ID are actually based on government orders.”
This one is in Vampires because Blackwater is involved. Apparently, they’re gong to be the Running Dogs of the new Coup. So mind your p’s and q’s, now, kids - and be a good little German.
A Tennessee town has run out of water, victim of the Southeast Drought.
“The mighty waterfall that fed the mountain hamlet has been reduced to a trickle, and now the creek running through the center of town is dry.
Three days a week, the volunteer fire chief hops in a 1961 fire truck at 5:30 a.m. — before the school bus blocks the narrow road — and drives a few miles to an Alabama fire hydrant. He meets with another truck from nearby New Hope, Ala. The two drivers make about a dozen runs back and forth, hauling about 20,000 gallons of water from the hydrant to Orme’s tank.”
And further, this may be a view of the future for many in the South:
“Between 6 and 9 every evening, the town scurries. Residents rush home from their jobs at the carpet factories outside town to turn on washing machines. Mothers start cooking supper. Fathers fill up water jugs. Kids line up to take showers.
“You never get used to it,” says Cheryl Evans, a 55-year-old who has lived in town all her life. “When you’re used to having water and you ain’t got it, it’s strange. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve turned on the faucet before remembering the water’s been cut.”"
Here is a link to the government’s new web site tracking the drought.
This guy is running a blog on the Atlanta water shortage, which is getting scary as the level of Lake Lanier continues to fall:
“The Corps of Engineers say we have 279 days left. The state says we have about 111 days left. CNN says we have 67 days left (81 days left as of 14 days ago). Alabama Gov. Bob Riley thinks we have about 243 days left (250 days left as of a week ago). So what on earth is the right answer?”
In this stressful season of collapse in the subprime mortgage sector, some big firms like Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch are getting spanked due to their exposure. So, how do their leaders cope as the company melts down on their watch? Do they sit around wringing their hands in despair? Do they send some TV stooge out on the attack for them against the Fed chairman? Or do they just say “f*** it” and indulge their real passions? Like bridge and golf.
Ups for deese guyz.
The military-industrial complex is lining up behind Hilary Clinton in the 2008 election. This, despite the fact that they’ve virtually owned the Republican party (or time-shared with the Christian Right) since Reagan was in charge.
“Employees of the top five U.S. arms manufacturers — Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop-Grumman, General Dynamics and Raytheon — gave Democratic presidential candidates $103,900, with only $86,800 going to the Republicans. “The contributions clearly suggest the arms industry has reached the conclusion that Democratic prospects for 2008 are very good indeed,” said Thomas Edsall, an academic at Columbia University in New York.”
Since Bill Clinton left office, the regular military budget has risen by about 60 percent, with another 600 billion tacked on for Afghanistan and Iraq. Had America channeled that money into building a new energy infrastructure, instead of rolling wide-eyed into Persia in 2002, we could have been well on our way to dealing with the fateful implications of Peak Oil (gradually opting out of direct involvement in Mideast politics, while we were at it). But instead, the arms makers are entrenched, flush with cash, and willing to spend it lobbying, to ensure that the spout isn’t cut off. This was probably the wrong direction to head.
Of course, patronage is the real game in Washington. Military contracts translate into jobs in congressional districts. The locals may run their radio shows all day, wailing about the wasteful spending of ‘big government’, but they re-elect their legislators when the bacon is sizzlin’ in their pan. A coalition of U.S. Senators has built up around funding the maintenance of military bases and shipyards in the Southern states, while expanding (strip-)mining and ranching privileges in the West. These states generally have smaller populations, but we’re talking about the Senate, where each unit gets equal representation. The political dynamic is much like the westward extension of the Mason-Dixon line before the Civil War, which allowed the ‘South’ to pick up enough states to maintain parity in the Senate, and keep slavery legal. It goes without saying that the present alliance includes members of both parties.
And Senator Clinton will be the Queen of Clubs this go round. Man,we needed one. I guess.
Donald Rumsfeld, one of the most disastrous figures in U.S. history, was forced to flee France this weekend, to escape prosecution for (allegedly) authorizing torture.
“The criminal complaint states that because of the failure of authorities in the United States and Iraq to launch any independent investigation into the responsibility of Rumsfeld and other high-level U.S. officials for torture despite a documented paper trail and government memos implicating them in direct as well as command responsibility for torture - and because the U.S. has refused to join the International Criminal Court - it is the legal obligation of states such as France to take up the case.”
Rumsfeld has been a key player in the Defense sector death industry for nigh on 40 years. He’s shuttled back and forth between stints in government (for Nixon and Ford, and both Bushes) and cushy lobbying jobs in the military-industrial complex. You need a pathological liar to go to bat for your new weapons project or war, well he’s the go-to guy. You need someone to run a little hustle on a dictator he’ll later wage war on, you call ol’ Don.
I think we need a new movement to extradite Rumsfeld to face these charges, just so he can clear the air and vindicate himself. It’s just unseemly to see a man who’s reached those kinds of heights, running like a scared little bitch. But I guess I can understand, too - if you’re a vampire, a life sentence is a long time.
Barack Obama’s cousin Dick Cheney is going hunting again, this time up in New York State.
Eliot Spitzer might want to sleep in that day.