More Challenger

Since everyone loves a disaster story, here's more video. This is an ABC piece from days after the crash, with video of the fuel leak that caused the explosion:




This one has this weird computer voice, but at about 1:35, it identifies several parts of the ship, including a wing and the crew cabin. Notice how small the crew cabin is in relation to the explosion:

Ok, now I'm done.

The TRUTH About Barack Obama

Here's a forward everyone will soon see. It's a rip off of Chuck Norris, but it's hilarious. Thanks to Jason Salus for the forward.

• Barack Obama wears a FLAG PIN at all times. Even in the shower.·
• Barack Obama says the PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE every time he sees an American flag. He also ends every sentence by saying, "WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL." Click here for video of Obama quietly mouthing the PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE in his sleep.
• A tape exists of Michelle Obama saying the PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE at a conference on PATRIOTISM.
• Every weekend, Barack and Michelle take their daughters HUNTING.
• Barack Obama is a PATRIOTIC AMERICAN. He has one HAND over his HEART at all times. He occasionally switches when one arm gets tired, which is almost never because he is STRONG.
• Barack Obama has the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE tattooed on his stomach. It's upside-down, so he can read it while doing sit-ups.
• There's only one artist on Barack Obama's iPod: FRANCIS SCOTT KEY.
• Barack Obama is a DEVOUT CHRISTIAN. His favorite book is the BIBLE, which he has memorized. His name means HE WHO LOVES JESUS in the ancient language of Aramaic. He is PROUD that Jesus was an American.
• Barack Obama goes to church every morning. He goes to church every afternoon. He goes to church every evening. He is IN CHURCH RIGHT NOW.
• Barack Obama's new airplane includes a conference room, a kitchen, and a MEGACHURCH.
• Barack Obama's skin is the color of AMERICAN SOIL.
• Barack Obama buys AMERICAN STUFF. He owns a FORD, a BASEBALL TEAM, and a COMPUTER HE BUILT HIMSELF FROM AMERICAN PARTS. He travels mostly by FORKLIFT.
• Barack Obama says that Americans cling to GUNS and RELIGION because they are AWESOME.

Challenger Disaster

Nilda and I just finished "When We Left The Earth" and loved it. But what's stuck with me was its section on the Challenger explosion. I didn't know the crew survived the initial explosion.

The explosion was caused by a failure of the O-rings in the boosters, which were supposed to flex and move to seal in gases at the joints. But it was so cold (40 degrees following a freeze in the low 20s, beating the previous coldest launch at 53 degrees) that day that the O-rings froze and were brittle, unable to bend and move as needed to create a seal. And since the launch was scheduled for the morning, there was not enough time for the sun to thaw the O-rings. A puff of black smoke at liftoff revealed the first crack in the seal, which later erupted into a fireball during liftoff.

The crew survived the explosion. Despite NASA's attempt to create the appearance otherwise, they were alive when the ship exploded and they knew what was going on. Three of the astronauts' air packs were turned on and the pilot's last transmission was "Uh-oh." The theory is that they blacked out almost immediately after the cabin lost pressure, although there is no way to tell whether or not the cabin lost pressure.

It is undisputed that they were all alive when they hit the water, and no one survived after that. They fell for 2 minutes, 45 seconds. There was a transcript of the final moments of the astronauts, but this was proved to be a hoax. The boosters were detonated remotely.

There was enough blame to go around. NASA was blamed for launching in unsafe conditions, there was pressure to launch too many missions, and Congress was faulted for not giving enough funding.

Here's CNN's coverage (notice the narrator who seems completely unprepared)

Here's footage with a view from the ground.

Victorious

Somewhere, in the deep recesses of my mind, the world cheers my achievements at spider solitaire.

VP Ledbetter

I'm sick of election blogs, too, but check this out. Obama's main goal right now is not fucking things up. He's ahead in the battleground states and he's way ahead in the national polls. There's no need for him to even go negative because McCain is tanking himself. Obama's even smoothings this out with Hillary by helping her with her campaign debt (a deal that was probably brokered weeks ago but kept under wraps until the attention died down).

Obama's VP choice, therefore, shouldn't rock the boat. Rather than being exciting or ground-breaking, Obama should pick a nice, boring VP candidate who won't mess up what's been a great campaign, so far. To me, Biden is looking better and better. He's been around a long time, so he's not a new face to get in the way, while at the same time letting Obama tout his experience and foreign policy experience. I was thinking he'd be Secretary of State, but with the current situation, he's a safe pick for VP, plagiarism and all.

On a whole other topic, I've only glanced at today's Supreme Court decision holding, for the first time, that the 2nd Amendment provides an individual right to bear arms, but I'm going into it with an open mind. The Court took a lot of heat for holding earlier this year, in a case called Ledbetter, that a woman who was discriminatorily paid less then her male counterparts for 20 years could not sue, based on the statute of limitations.

The Court held that since the discriminatory decision was made 20 years ago, and that since she conceded that the decisions since then were not discriminatory, she could not sue based on discrimination from two decades ago. The Court specifically distinguished its prior decision in Bazemore, where the Court held that decisions made with discriminatory intent that continued into the statutory period were actionable. As bad as the result was, a woman paid less then men for her whole career could not sue, it was based on valid reasoning.

Election Bored

I've come to accept that Nilda and I are Obama's base. When all the talking heads talk about how Obama won the college-educated liberals, all I can think is, "That's us!" The problem is that things can only go downhill from here.

I was so excited for Obama to win the nomination. I looked forward to Obama being the first democrat to break through the Republican cloud and finally make the changes that me and all my elitist, liberal friends were hoping for. But then, to my utter dismay, John McCain turned out to be a terrible candidate. From his horrific green screen speech to his embrace of Bush's hated policies, he has no idea how to motivate his own party, much less the general electorate. If anything, McCain makes Obama look even sharper and more appealing as the future of this country.

So the general election has become boring. Obama looks like he's going to waltz through to the election and I won't get the climactic showdown I was hoping for. If anything, it seems clear that the country is no where near McCain's position. My biggest fear is that Obama (or a supporter) is going to do something stupid, either a flubbed comment or speech that doesn't meet my unreasonably high expectations. I've peaked, and it's only June.

To all the Clinton supporters still mourning her loss, I know it's tough to watch somebody you don't really trust take the lead. But remember, this is how the rest of us felt throughout the entire Clinton era. It's your turn to take the backseat, now.

Also, here's a great New York Magazine article about the intricacies of Obama's speeches, how his use of alliteration, groupings of three and simple phrases has raised the bar on speech-making in American politics.

Then look at this idiotic op-ed by David Brooks about how Bush was sooooo smart for the surge, even though everyone at the time said he should have done that a long time ago. Maybe, David, if Bush hadn't ignored common sense up until that time, the surge wouldn't have been necessary.

Finally, here's a great completely unrelated video from my mom. Thanks, Mom!

Bad Ass Of The Day: George Carlin

I tried watching a George Carlin special on HBO a few months ago and couldn't get through it. It was long-winded, a bit elitist and a lot dated. And he looked terrible, a lot older than his 71 years. But he was still awesome. He turned down a successful career as a clean-cut comedian to become a counterculture comic for their pot-smoking kids. He kept up his routine even though it led to an arrest for obscenity. It was his balls early on that led to his later elevation to icon. Here's a link to his "Seven Dirty Words" routine from his prime, which was specifically mentioned in a Supreme Court decision about obscenity.

We Went Outside This Weekend!

We did! For about five hours on Saturday, and it was everything I thought it would be. Here's a recap of our weekend:

• We saw The Diving Bell & The Butterfly, a true story about a french editor of Elle who, after suffering a stroke in 1995, was diagnosed with "locked in" syndrome, where the only thing he could move were his eyelids. The movie is about how he wrote his autobiography by blinking to a nurse. I just ordered it on Amazon. It fucked me up for the whole weekend.
• Nilda and I sat in the park for a few hours on Saturday watching other people open at least 5 bottles of prosecco. Good idea, universe.
• I convinced the Mr. Softee truck to make me a float, but to blend it like a milkshake. I. Am. Brilliant.
• Nilda got a milkshake. I drink your milkshake, Nilda.
• In preparation for Sunday, Nilda and I then went to PJ Liquor Warehouse, the absolute best wine & liquor shop you will ever go to. The woman giving samples of Absolut, after looking at our cart, asked if we were having a party. We said no, just stocking up the house. She responded, "I like how you roll."
• We got St. Germain, a french liqueur which tastes like lychee, and Patron XO, a tequila liqueur that goes great in coffee (like Baileys).
• St. Germain + Tanqueray 10 + tonic = awesome.
• David Brooks, who's usually hit or miss, had a fantastic article about how Obama, for all his talk about "new politics," is a shrewd and talented politician. One talking head on Sunday morning said that liberals love that split personality. We do.
• The plan was to take a bottle of Proseco to the park on Sunday, but the rain kept us in.
• St. Germain + Brugal rum + fresh mint + seltzer = perfect Sunday afternoon.
• Too much perfect Sunday afternoon leads to nap.
• I met my goal of writing a blog post this weekend! Hooray!

Letting The Whole School Down

I know, I know. I've been lax in my continuing obligation to entertain the masses with my witty and insightful musings on the meaning of life, the universe and Andrew's inner conflict over his gayness. Just so you know, I'm thinking about writing blogs on Tiger Woods, how I'm proud of my country for the first time in my adult life and the difficulty of blogging & why Yael's blog is the ideal blog. In the meantime, here's a link to a blog about the tv show "Coach" that Jeremy somehow found. I have no desire to read it, either.

Bad Ass Of The Day: Dennis Kucinich

Today, Kucinich proposed two dozen charges against President Bush seeking his impeachment for executing a "calculated and wide-ranging strategy" to deceive citizens and Congress into believing that Iraq posed an imminent threat to the United States. Both Congressional Democrats and Obama, understandably, want nothing to do with this radioactive motion, but good for Kucinich for showing the balls to stand up and let history know that at least one Congressman stood up and took a stand about how we were wrongly led into war.

Brian's Energy Policy

We've finally learned what the price of gas would need to reach to impact consumer usage, and it's $4/barrel. The goal must be energy independence where the US is not so dependent on one form of energy that we are vulnerable enough to be held hostage by it.

Here's The Golden Path:

Technology. As I've been saying for years, individuals will not change their daily lives. We need to adapt our technology to foster cars, buildings and appliances that take no extra effort, but save energy (like the energy-saver light bulbs). People won't stop driving, but they won't mind driving more energy-efficient vehicles.

Taxes. The market must change so that there is an incentive to be energy-efficient. The only way to do that is to keep gas over $4/gallon, the point that actually impacts the market. Simply taxing the US oil companies won't help, since they only control about 10% of the worldwide oil supply. Once we find a way to get gas prices under control, we need taxes that will keep gas above $4, with the revenues going to finance alternative energies elsewhere. Oil can no longer be a cheap energy solution.

Drilling. Before we can adopt new energy resources, we need a short-term solution to get out of our oil-dependent crisis. This means harvesting oil in North America, including ANWAR and the continental shelf. This is is full of hard choices and we need to think long-term. Democrats need to bend on this one. While we cannot go in and drill everything in sight, we need to get as much oil as we can now, to give us some breathing room until we can develop other energy resources.

There. The Most Important Blog In The Country has spoken.

The Beatles Rule

It's a fact. The Beatles are the perfect band, holding together the early days of rock 'n roll and modern music as we know it. The only thing better than the Beatles is the myth that surround them. Here are some random facts:

• George wrote "Here Comes the Sun" when he played hooky from work and spent the day at a friend's garden. That friend was Eric Clapton.
• George was not upset when his wife Patti left him to marry Eric Clapton. While Clapton thought they had to fight it out, George recognized that his marriage had been falling apart for years and was happy for Eric and Patti.
• Although John was the leader, Paul was always in control. He decided to make the second side of Abbey Road a medley and nixed George's proposed guitar part on "Hey Jude" that answered the verse.
• Paul wrote "Her Majesty" while waiting for the others to get to the studio. It was supposed to go between "Mean Mr. Mustard" and "Polythene Pam" but didn't work. He was right.
• Ringo blames the fact that he is left-handed for the lack of drum rolls on the Beatles records (he always needed a beat to get his hands in the right place). He was very proud of his drumming on "Rain" because he finally had a good fill.
• By the time of the "early" Beatles years of "Love Me Do" and "She Loves You," the Beatles had been playing together for years, including spending most of 2 years in Hamburg, Germany. Ringo was not yet in the band and would not join until after they were signed.
• John said that by the time they went to America, their best days as a band were behind them.
• The Beatles did not get a recording contract on their first audition with Decca Records. The guy who turned them down later started an auto-biography called, "The Man Who Turned Down the Beatles," but passed away before finishing it. Following the Beatles, he later signed the Rolling Stones.
• Cynthia Lennon claims that during their 5 year relationship, they never used birth control of any kind and only had one child, Sean. I don't believe her, either.
• In their early days, Paul lived with the family of his girlfriend, Jane Asher. His relationship with Jane's family turned out to have been more important than his relationship with Jane.
• Cynthia Lennon came home from a vacation to find John and Yoko sitting in their living room together, with Yoko wearing Cynthia's bathrobe. Cynthia responded by saying, "John, would you like to come to dinner?"
• Here's a video from the "early" days, playing "Some Other Guy," a rare cover song that the Beatles were proudly one of the few bands to play. As great as this is, the most striking thing is how normal the performance is by today's standards:

Sex & The Shitty: Post-Mortem

I sat in a theater full of women watching Sex & The City and pondered my blog. The world needs to know how The Most Important Blog In The World would respond, and I recognized the significance of the responsibility I was to bare. But that was a week ago and I still hadn't written anything. Here goes.

I did not hate the movie. There I said it, and that's as close to a "like" as you're going to get. I think it helped that I saw the movie in a crowd of fans. The lobby was full of women looking like they were getting ready to go "dancing," female code for going out to have guys hit on them. Waiting for the movie to start, Nilda had fun picking out how many "husbands" she could find. She found three husbands, not counting the two male couples who were there together.

Without giving away any of the plot for the ladies who have not seen it yet (i.e., Matt), the movie was not bogged down by many of the flaws from the show. There was no random sex, at least among the characters, and there wasn't enough of the male characters to make them a focus of everything. The movie, if anything, was a statement about sexuality and women over 40.

Reaction has been mixed, and here's where I see the spilt: If you liked the series finale, you'll hate the movie; if you didn't like the finale or were ambivalent, you'll love the movie. The movie will be loved most by women who - correctly - thought the finale was contrived and a little too easy. This is the big emotional crescendo that they had hoped for.

But the crying. Oy, the crying. But that's why they were there! You could smell estrogen. The smart ones, like Nilda, didn't wear mascara because they were prepared. Whoever wrote this knew that they were writing a movie for women to watch after a break-up. The dvd sales are going to be through the roof on this one!

A Cotton Ball Died In Our Bedroom

Everyone, this is the new rug. New rug, this is everyone.


This is all Nilda's fault. Luckily, I can make snow angels in it.

Keep Your Mazel Tov

Over the past few days, I've heard, "It must be happy at your house" or "Congratulations" or some other question implying that I should feel some kind of personal satisfaction that Obama is now conclusively the nominee. Putting aside the fact that we've all known for quite some time that Obama would be the nominee, I feel no sense of personal accomplishment. There's no need to congratulate me. That just makes me feel weird.

While we're at it, nothing is being "taken away" from Hillary. There were a series of elections to see who could get more delegates, and she lost. That's it. You can't say she wasn't given a chance, since she was the inevitable nominee right up until the voting started. The superdelegates didn't take it away from her, since they were all on her side right up until she started losing all the caucus states that she ignored. And let's not forget that she would have been just fine if the superdelegates had ignored the pledged delegates to make her the nominee in spite of the voters. This was an election and she lost. The only way it could have been taken from her is if it was hers in the first place, and it wasn't.

So no, don't congratulate me. I'm not happy that it had to end this way, with a bitter division in the party that Hillary is trying to use as leverage to get something, although no one is allowed to know what that something is. There's no need to congratulate anyone where the losing candidate's supporters are going to support McCain, even though he is completely at odds with Hillary and adverse to many of the issues she's fought for. Please, let's not be so dramatical.

Clinton As VP

So Hillary Clinton did not endorse Obama, as I predicted. But that's just because she's intimidated by The Most Important Blog In The World.

The real question now is whether Hillary will be the VP nominee. She will not. Yes, she told her supporters that she would accept the slot if offered to her, but that was just for show. This is because (1) she doesn't play second fiddle to anyone and (2) she knows that Obama would not ask her. But she has to at least give the appearance of being willing to accept the position so that she doesn't look like a sore loser.

You can really see the fact that Hillary knows her campaign season is over by Bill's statements yesterday that it would be his last time working on a campaign. Clearly, he should support whoever is the Democratic nominee, especially since he's not trying to stay out of politics. But Bill Clinton, like Brian, doesn't campaign for anyone other than himself. Ever.

Clinton's Exit Strategery

Tomorrow night, following the last of the primaries, Clinton will suspend her campaign and endorse Barack Obama. She has told her biggest fundraisers to attend her speech in NYC tomorrow. She is scheduled to return to Washington on Wednesday and has no further campaign events planned. She has told her staffers to submit all receipts for reimbursement by the end of the week.

The condition for her departure is that she gets to be the one to heal and unite the party. Obama has told all of the superdelegates who will support him that they must publicly commit immediately after Tuesday night, and no later than Thursday. This, of course, will let Hillary position herself as the great healer, the one who gave up "the popular vote*" in favor of party unity. Hillary has allegedly threatened that if there is no rush of support to Obama following her withdrawal, she will resume her campaign and take it all the way to the Convention.

Lessons of the day:

• Hillary's like that little kid who won't give up an argument unless he gets to end it on his terms and, if not, threatens to take his ball and go home.
• Clinton must endorse Obama tomorrow. Anything less will make her endorsement meaningless and will prevent her from becoming the great unifier of the Democratic Party.
• The fact that Clinton did not win the popular vote is no reason for her not to say she did.
• Tomorrow night will determine Clinton's legacy. I say she'll give a guarded endorsement of Obama, leaving the door open just enough for a run in 2012. Whether Obama wins or loses, the party will never forgive her for making the election about her.
• The Clinton era is over. The Clinton influence, like the Kennedy influence, will never go away.