The U.S. Government is spending $33 million to advertise to the public that the $20 bill is being replaced. Government is forcing this switch and there is nothing anyone can do about it but they are spending tens of millions of dollars to encourage people to use the new money. This is under a Republican administration. Here’s the link.
OK…I know I’ve done more than enough name changes in the past little while but I found another site that had a similar name to mine…and they had it first. This site is similar enough in purpose to mine that it would be lame of me to keep the old name here. I even thought of using the same picture they have in their banner on my site before I found out they were using both the picture and the name. Oh well.
There are some other sites that use the word jeremiad in their name but none of them are run by someone name Jeremy (at least as far as I’ve been able to discover) so I am back to having a good original name for my blog. I like the new name…I am planning on it being permanant. I might even change my URL to reflect the new name. We’ll see…
Here’s why I’m trying to lose weight! (The attached link goes to the NYTimes site…it requires registration but is free)
From yesterday’s Opinion Journal Best Of The Web:
Hugh Shelton, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks, has some harsh words for a fellow former general. The Los Altos (Calif.) Town Crier reports on Shelton’s appearance at a local college:
“What do you think of General Wesley Clark and would you support him as a presidential candidate,” was the question put to him by moderator Dick Henning, assuming that all military men stood in support of each other. General Shelton took a drink of water and Henning said, “I noticed you took a drink on that one!”
“That question makes me wish it were vodka,” said Shelton. “I’ve known Wes for a long time. I will tell you the reason he came out of Europe early had to do with integrity and character issues, things that are very near and dear to my heart. I’m not going to say whether I’m a Republican or a Democrat. I’ll just say Wes won’t get my vote.”
Here is the actual Article that the quote is pulled from. Read it if you want to read of an example of a military man who actually deserves the adulation the Clark has been receiving. Hugh Shelton is cool.
Here is a good sample of the fine work that can be found at IMAO every day:
TOP TEN WESLEY CLARK CAMPAIGN SLOGANS
10. I’m a general and a Democrat… isn’t that wacky!
9. My day-to-day views on the war on Iraq are like a box of chocolates - you’ll never know what you’re going to get.
8. You don’t know me, but I don’t know you, so we’re even.
7. Pay no attention to the Clintons behind the curtain.
6. I admit it; Arnold Schwarzenegger bribed me to run to make him look decisive on issues.
5. I helped fight in Kosovo. Yeah, Kosovo. Oh, come on! You remember that conflict. It wasn’t that long ago.
4. Support me because I would have voted “Nes” on Iraq.
3. I nearly started World War III. What other candidate has that much pull?
2. My stance on that very important issue is… Hey! Look! I can do a handstand!
And the number one Wesley Clark campaign slogan…
Because I’m not one of those nine other guys.
Okay, so that was a lot of variations of the same joke. But there’s the problem: none of us know that much about him.
Yet he leads in the polls. Heh heh.
Frank J. is awesome. Check out his site daily…especially the “In My World” segments. Go back to the first one and read them all! It’ll take a while but you’ll get many many good laughs.
It has been over a year since I first blogged on the Space Elevator. Here is a very optimistic and interesting article from the NY Times on the technology that will take my kid on a recreational trip to the moon sometime in her lifetime (and hopefully mine…I want to go with her). Since the Times article won’t be up permanantly I’m including part of it in this post:
“The first thought is, Is this really going to work?” said Dr. Steven E. Patamia, a researcher at Los Alamos, who was enlisted into performing space elevator calculations a week before the conference. “When you get into it, it begins to make sense. There are a good number of technical issues. They are probably all `overcomeable.’ ”
The original idea of a space elevator is more than a century old. In 1895, Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky, a Russian visionary who devised workable ideas for rocket propulsion and space travel decades before others, proposed a tower thousands of miles high attached to a “celestial castle” in orbit around Earth, with the centrifugal force of the orbiting castle holding up the tower. (Imagine swinging a rope with a rock tied to the end of it.)
But the idea was fundamentally impossible to build. Steel, then the strongest material known, was too heavy and not strong enough to support that weight.
Other scientists periodically revisited and reinvented Tsiolkovsky’s idea, inspiring science fiction writers like Mr. Clarke.
Nanotubes spurred NASA to take a more serious look in 1999. A team of scientists envisioned huge cables of nanotubes and magnetically levitated cars traveling up and down. The structure would be so large that it would require grabbing an asteroid and dragging it into Earth orbit to act as the counterweight for holding up the elevator.
This is a really cool idea. It is too bad we have to rely on the government to do something like this. I would love it if someone like Bill Gates who has a couple billion dollars laying around for a rainy day were to sponsor the research and first construction. He would probably never see a return on the money…but his kids would. This should be done privately. NASA will just screw things up. Maybe I’ll just have to do it myself. I’ll start saving money…if any of you want to contribute to the cause I’ll cut your grandkids in on the future earnings!
UPDATE 10/6/03
Kelly sent me this cool depiction of what the Space Elevator might look like once it gets big enough to take passengers. (I’m experiencing tech difficulties right now…the pic will be posted this afternoon.)
I like this post at Michaels blog…A.K.A. Michael’s Shower.
I read Wesley Clark’s 100 Year Vision for America on his website Clark04.Com. What a load of tripe. Any politician from any party could write exactly what he has on that site. There is nothing there to differentiate his beliefs or ideas from those of anyone else who will be running in 2004. You’d think that someone who is declaring himself a candidate for president would take the whole enterprise a little more seriously. Clark stands for nothing and it is apparent that his supporters will fall for anything.
There are those who disagree. I had quite a few comments from new readers on my last Wes Clark post. None of the respondents can tell me why this guy would be a good president. All they can do is cry about how badly they hate Bush. Unfortunately that is the current state of the Democrat party. They have no new ideas and most their old ideas have failed when implemented as policy. That is why I can’t vote for a Democrat in a national election.
UPDATE
I’m pasting a whole entry from Daniel Simmon’s blog here because it perfectly applies to what I’ve been talking about:
I’m no Democrat, but shouldn’t the Dems field a candidate that is ideologically a Democrat? MSNBC.com reports that Wesly Clark told said Colorado Gov. Bill Owens and Marc Holtzman, now president of the University of Denver, that “I would have been a Republican if Karl Rove had returned my phone calls.”
posted by Daniel : 7:11 PM
Like I said. The guy doesn’t believe in anything.
It has always bugged me that Reagan got the reputation of being a stupid man who could do nothing but act out the part of being a great man. I didn’t really have any information to refute the claims made against one of my heros…I think that is what really bugged me.
Read these letters posted at Time magazine’s website from the book Reagan: A Life In Letters to get a better idea of what he was really like.
He may have made some mistakes and was far from a perfect guy or a perfect president…but he was a whole lot better than any president we’ve had since…and at least as good as any guy to precede him.
He was great because he was a good man. He was a great president because he wasn’t afried of his ideals…he stated them and pursued them as policy even when it wasn’t always the most popular thing to do. The guy we have in office now doesn’t come close to meeting that standard but I guess it could be worse (the Democrats running for office…all 10 of them…are even more wishy washy).
I haven’t bought the book yet (it goes on sale tomorrow) but this letter is my favorite of those that have been published on the internet. I also loved this one.
I got back from Florida today to a home that has been without electricity since Thursday’s hurricane. THAT SUCKS! They said the power may be back on sometime within the next couple days. We’ll see. I’m posting from my van where I plugged in the DSL modem and the laptop. Since this isn’t a viable solution I guess I’ll have to wait on posting my ideas about the nimrod Wes Clark and other stuff that has been going on during the past week. If the power comes up tomorrow I’ll do some unusual Sunday posting. In the meantime check out the moronic comments I got on my last Wesley Clark post. I’m putting together some other good material on the guy so check back soon.
Oh yeah…GO VOLS!!! 24-10 over FLORIDA!!! EXCELLENT!!!
Probably not much posting today…have to get ready for the road trip tomorrow! Check out the cool site above by clicking on the image.
This water tower can be seen in front of Uday Hussein’s Mosul bachelor pad, overlooking the Tigris River. Check out this link for the whole story!
More good work being done in Iraq by the great soldiers of the 101st Airborne. Here’s hoping all those guys will be able to come home soon to catch a game at Neyland Stadium in Knoxville!
The Mannings are planning on being there for the Vanderbilt game in November. More details later.
Lisa and I watched one of the least politically correct movies we’ve seen in a long time tonight. We loved it…even though it is pretty corny. We saw The Apple Dumpling Gang, a Disney movie from 1975. This is a kid’s movie that was made before the hypersensitive nanny crowd took over Hollywood. Back then it was completely normal for a kid’s movie to have those three things now considered demonic: guns, booze, and smokes. These days the liquor would be ok…and full frontal nudity would be ok…but the guns and smokes would be a big no no to the busy-body nanny types who scream, “Won’t somebody please think of the children!” and faint every time they see someone light up on the screen.
This movie had Tim Conway rolling his own cigarette and lighting up. Don Knott’s pants were on fire and he used them as his lighter. Hilarious. I remember watching this movie at the school after hours at the end of the school year. It never lead me to want to light-up. I didn’t even remember that part, but I’m sure I laughed at it then just as I did tonight. He put his smoke in his mouth and lighted it from the flames flying from Don Knott’s bum. That’s good comedy.
I grew up in Northern Utah near an Air Force base that housed a squadron of F-16s. It was completely normal to hear the distinctive scream of those planes all day long (and sometimes even at night). I loved it. When I’d hear the faint sound of the jets I’d begin to scan the skies to try to catch a glimpse of them. I loved it when the sound built to a cool high-pitched thunder and a flight of the fighters flew over. The planes were SO cool. Sometimes I’d park my car outside the base under the flight path of these fighters and enjoy the show as they would take off and land in the afternoon.
Two years and three days ago I was working at my desk in the corner of the cubicle farm that is my office at the Foreign Service Institute in Arlington, Virginia. I remember being in the middle of a project that had me deep in thought when Barry O’Connell, one of my co-workers and friends, told me that a plane had flown into one of the World Trade Center buildings in New York and they had pictures of it on TV in the EX office.
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