BigBlog

"Think Local. Vote National." At least this slogan is properly punctuated; although shouldnt that be "Think locally."? Otherwise it could be read as an imperative command to the yokels.

"The Greens. Because who you vote for matters." Oh? Really?

"Stand up for Australia. Stand up for real action." Liberal Party of Australia, or Advanced Medical Institute?

"Some things are worth fighting for", until you run out of money, anyway.

ciao hippydavenought

Tony Abbott, Flash Gordon or Ming the Merciless?

ciao hippydavenaught

free range burgers, wraps and salad at Red Rooster at the moment. According to Australian Food News in February this year the provider was Ferguson Valley Free Range Chicken farms;with the chickens in barns at night and pastures during the day. The bacon in the bacon  and cheese option is not free range though, and the menu option is a more expensive range with different buns and fillings. Still, i have been buying these products to exercise my market options.

ciao hippydave

there is a hidden womens vote for Labor in this federal election. There are women who are currently expressing a vote for other parties, even the Greens i suspect; who are polling as not voting for Labor, who will vote Labor on the day

and dont forget, as most of the mainstream media has, that individual polls have a measurable amount of reliability, they should really be published with a few more statistical details, at least a simple plus or minus percentage; so we should always think about individual poll figures as only being accurate to plus or minus some figure

Vote

Vote below the line if you can, this can be tedious, and you need to be aware of the requirements for the individual election regarding how many numbers you need to put down if voting below the line. Voting below the line defeats the back room deals between parties for preferences; and the insidious specific layout, wording and intent of many how-to-vote materials which are designed to convey the message that you cannot vote below the line, rather than the details of the options of voting above or below the line. Im looking at most of the parties with this, based on the last federal election

ciao hippydave

WolframAlpha is autistic.

I dont mean that in a bad way; i am self diagnosed with (amongst other things) Attention Deficit Disorder--i dont use ADHD as DSM does: as a matter of deliberate usage, and as a matter of my personal self diagnosis (im not the jumpy kind); i also dont subscribe to it being a "Disorder" at all, yes, a variation from the "normal" at about 5% of the general population--but i would argue that ADHD and some comorbid (sorry for the word, im not trying to be morbid; but thats the technical term) "disorders" autism, Aspergers, Tourettes; may well have sociobiological advantages; these conditions may well have a negative effect on survival for the individual, but provide benefit to the social group/s that individual is part of; therefore, selected for, in an evolutionary sense, by survival, growth or failure, or not, of discrete social groups and their gene pools. But yeah, consider your communications with Google, or Bing, or Alta Vista even, or Teoma; and compare with WolframAlpha. [edit for punctuation]

ciao hippydave

WWTAD? What would Tony Abbott do?

for my last entry i tried WolframAlpha on a, i guess, NYSE share code "APPL" which Wolfram "understood" with no problems; afterwards i tried an Australian Security eXchange share "TSL". I did get it to work but it took me a while. WolframAlpha understands "ASX", but doesn't understand "ASX:TSL" or "TSL on ASX"; it doesn't understand "TSL Australian share".

this is something i've found with WolframAlpha before, you're getting great results with all this rich interactive data; much higher signal to noise ratio, when it does work, than old school major search engines with their lists of links; then blam - a totally useless result, or it just does not get what you entered at all

it does understand "Telstra" though, doesn't even need "Telstra shares" or "ASX Telstra"

ciao hippydave

try entering a share code into WolframAlpha. My favorite is the "Price history" graph; note the pull down menu to change the time scale and the pull down menu to change the type of graph. "Show trend" at different time scales is very informative, it will tell you if the price is above or below the longer term trend.

or try something like "AU$ v US$" and look at the "Exchange history" graph over different time scales.

housekeeping: i've started putting entries into categories, so i'll gradually be going over the archive. I've also changed the number of entries per page to 15 instead of the default 5.

ciao hippydave 

instead of using the mouse, keyboard shortcuts give benefits including less potential for RSI but also increased speed and efficiency.

try the shortcut to enter a new web address ("Command + L" for Firefox on my mac) followed by the "tab" key. This moves the focus of text insertion from the location bar (new web address text box) to the search text box (on Firefox at least), type your search terms, and then the "return" key; all without needing to use the mouse.

the "Command" key is the "apple" key on Macs [er, no its not; that was the Apple// family 2010-08-18]

many keyboard shortcuts are shown next to their commands on your pull down menus. It#39;s also worth while searching for "keyboard shortcuts" in your online help; this doesn#39;t mean you have to learn them all, but if you learn a few, they can save you a lot of time and effort.Maccut "Command + x"
copy "Command + c"
paste "Command + v"

Windows
cut "Ctrl + x"
copy ""Ctrl + c"
paste ""Ctrl + v"

are good ones to start with.

ciao hippydave

If God had meant us to fly, he would have given us the ability to invent aeroplanes

My favourite spam subject line at the moment "I sent a deadly animal to you" cheers hippydave

NASA has a hangup about science v. development. Otherwise they would be assembling sats on the ISS. cheers hippydave

Yeah, spray bio-degradable (& i mean  REALLY biodegradable, not just like those plastics thusly promoted that tend to just break up into small bits faster than ordinary plastics) aerogel on ice sheets and glaciers at the optimum time of year.

ciao hippydave

"no cost-free way to tackle climate change" SMH, "Rudd all talk and no ticker: Abbott", Stephanie Peatling, January 31, 2010

Hello! Penny! Low hanging fruit...  Hello!

Energy efficiency audits and optimisation, e.g. roof (and even wall) insulation has a long term negative effect (it LOWERS) costs for households, business small and large (and even the ones bloated in the head), and even government departments; whilst providing a short term boom and longer term elevated levels of work in implementing such measures. OK, OK, to be pedantic this would be a variable cost index over time and so cannot be evaluated in the terms of Penny's "cost-free" refutation. What does that even mean? Go Foukault that little phrase for a while.

But. (i  know thats not a sentence; but hay, where do you think you are?]

Biochar is an existing industry (at least one wholesale distribution chain in the US for the end product) which can be carried out in households, farms, small businesses & Local Government; but probably not effectively and efficiently by any Australian state or the Federal g/Gubberment/s. So they're less interested in it. Labor also is hung up on how any idea of the Opposition can't be any good. Sorry folks, this was one of the biggest diseases of the last lot.

Biochar... ah, just go and read the previous posts. I think i've said most of this before.

cheers hippydave

or you can do it the other way around

i mean filing under the primary name of the charity and putting cross reference bits of stationery (or the computer equivalnent come to think of it, you could just use Notepad®, or TextEdit®, or your fave version of groff) in the charity folder

ciao hippydave

if you have the same sort of filing cabinet rat's nest as me, try cross-referencing. On each useful bit of stationery -- which might be in large friendly type on a landscape sheet of paper (e.g. A4 or Letter) -- type one cross reference from the primary name of the file. E.g.: make a charities folder (or drawer, or filing cabinet...), file your charity receipt there, but also file a cross reference (& have a folder, or drawer) for each of the charities by name.

oh, and also read "How to get things done".

ciao hippydave

A blogs a great place to have a dump. Cheers hippydave

desktop/laptop Try finding your commands in the menus at the top of your screen Look at the keyboard version Escape the menu Use the keyboard equivalent Repeat.

that all was supposed to look something more like this (wit a bit of editing thanks to hindsight):

Plastic dancer: ghost or shroud?

Do you wander like that lonely cloud?

Do you teach us lessons dread and fleet?

I beg you tell us, for i see no happy feet.

Are you dancing in the rain? I hear no happy song,

Unless perhaps the freeway's sighs, there all along.

ciao hippydave

feet. Are you dancing in the rain? I hear no happy song, unless perhaps the freeway's sighs, there all along.

Plastic dancer. Ghost or shroud? Do you wander like that lonely cloud? Do you teach us lessons dread and fleet? I beg you tell us, for i see no happy

One's first pair of bifocals are a very good reminder of the inevitable march of time.

Time is a spiritually permeable membrane.

Hello to teh world of sms blogging cheers hippydave

Yeah. Bulletproof. Nice.

nbsp;whatever it is. Sweeet. nbsp; nbsp; 8)

the "Right" often whinges about the evils of "Big Government". So, how much do you want to cut military spending by? The other things that's struck me lately, is that the extent of economic participation in the economy gives government the handles to wield economic stimulus.

The question to ask anybody who disses the federal Australian Rudd stimulus is "What proportion of the federal deficit due to the GFC was due to loss of goverment revenue compared to stimulus spending?"

a Rude boy
boy, Rude
a Wide boy
wide Boi
wide wise
Arise: a ride,
a lifebOY
alight, arrive alive
a right widebOY
alright, awake;
a right-wide-rude-bOY

i don't agree with anybody about everything, but i do agree with everybody about something.

Bluejuice: "Broken Leg". I'm loving it.

Many Australians often have a weak or non-existent aspiration of the letter "t", so that it often sounds like a "d"; not that there's anything wrong with that, i don't subscribe to the idea that there is only one sort of proper English vocabulary nor pronunciation. However, i have noticed that almost always this aspiration is much more fully and distinctly pronounced when we say the word "beautiful". My little theory is that people want the word "beautiful" to be beautiful; and that there is an unconscious belief that it should be pronounced in what we used to be taught was proper English pronunciation.

i'm from Sydney originally & i still live in New South Wales; however, for a long time i've been thinking it would be a great idea to move Australia Day. Now i read in the Herald (No apology for Rudd's national day about-face Kelly Burke, SMH, January 25, 2009) that

... the National Indigenous Times has criticised the Labor Government for failing to honour a promise made in the ALP's national platform before the 2007 election, a promise to implement recommendations made in a 2000 Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation report that included "changing the date of Australia Day to a date that includes all Australians".

Wait, what? Was this a "non-core promise"? I understand that politics is the art of the possible, and that it was important for Australia and the world that we had a change in Federal government; i appreciate that some significant, real changes have been made; but this seems to be a government that is more interested in spinning than consulting. I know consultation is a bit hard, you have to listen & then actually think about what you have heard; but listen up! The web filtering idea (setting aside issues of free speech) will not work.

The current Australia Day is "Invasion Day" to many indigenous Australians, this in a country that still has no treaty with traditional owners, unlike other comparable Commonwealth countries (& the US). Furthermore the foundation of the colony of NSW is irrelevant for MOST of the country. Our third Queensland born Prime Minister should understood this.

So when should we move Australia Day to? When was the Commonwealth of Australia founded? Make Australia Day 1 January, and have a two day holiday; you know it makes sense.

Biochar may at last get a toe hold in at the UN Climate Change Convention in Poznan, Poland. I#39;m on a mailing list at the International Biochar Initiative (IBI), they#39;re taking part at the conference. Micronesia is submitting biochar at the UN conference as a ldquo;fast-startrdquo; strategy; this is significant since this could be adopted before 2012.

Biochar, also known as agrichar, solves a number of problems at once; cheaply with a win-win-win output.

1. derive syngas and charcoal from many sorts of plant or other organic material
2. powder the charcoal and add to soil, helps plant growth vitality
3. historical examples from South America demonstrate 1000 year storage of carbon
4. syngas provides all the heating energy for the process, plus a small excess
5. syngas is a suitable fuel for cars and trucks
6. fairly low-tech, very well proven technology, low capital cost, distributable, currently commercially available.

that#39;s what we#39;ve got to do in the jaws of economic downturn and global warming, put the money towards solving more than one problem at once. It#39;s nice to see that the incoming administrationmdash;#39;cause we don#39;t have to say just "Obama" any more he has a cabinet of strength in the style of Lincolnmdash; doing this, putting money towards making federal buildings more energy efficient. What does this do?

1. reduces energy requirements to ameliorate global warming
2. low capital cost, start by working with existing infrastructure
3. saves money in the long term
4. labour intensive so it helps with unemployment

War on Warming!

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Footnotes
(1) Copyright copy; 2008. The Sydney Morning Herald.

(2) Copyright copy; 2008 The New York Times Company
[edit for punctuation]

Steel Willed Woman

Steel willed woman
My love's Liege
Lifted that siege
Of silence, and relieved
The assaults of lovelorn lonely nights

Knights of Wing-ed helms
Laid the foundations of that liberation
Salted that Catholic pool in preparation
With hard-arsed carborundum
With no time for fools

Grind me, grind me, grind me down
Knock off my rough apexes, arrises
As they arise
And then reprise, reprise, reprise
Hit me, hit me, heat me, hard

No safety word
I bard again
My friend
Before
You were
My steel willed one

There was something magnificent, common between the last US federal election and the last Australian federal election; something wonderfully positive done by the losers: Howard & McCain. In their concession speeches they both emphasised the importance of the democratic process. After the usual tough competition in the campaigns, they did their best to remind their constituents that the campaign was over and that everybody now needed to come together to get on with the greater struggles, our common aims and objectives.

So what? you may ask. Well, this sort of attitude is not a given. There are plenty of democracies around the world where principles of democracy were put aside in the struggle to win. A friend of mine has pointed out that democratic principles in democracies must be fought for, must be struggled for and can not be taken for granted.

i'm calling it for Obama, next President Elect of the mighty US of A. I might get egg on my face, but i don't think so.

I've been following the New York Times web page coverage (which is calling quite conservatively), they have just called D.C. with 14% of the vote counted Obama is over 91%; they still haven't called Florida which is quite close but i think its going Democrat, 84% reporting Obama with a lead which has been wavering around 1.5%. The CNN TV projection is for Obama.

Whew! w007! Huzzah!

should i question the tone that most of my blog entries seem to have followed? Mostly negative, frequently sarcastic (in this iteration, anyway. The old HTMLmanack, which hardly anybody read; was, i think, more positive in tone). Is this "right speech"? I don't know, comments welcome

this prompts me to return to the promise i made in the first entry of this bigblog version of this slightly bloggish website. Originally titled Hippy Dave: A HTMLmanack, named in tribute to Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack, it dates from 13 March 1997. HTMLmanack was first hosted on Microplex, which was apparently bought by Optus in 1998. It went offline in 1998 until 2000 and resumed on Blueprint Internet

1. http://www.mpx.com.au/~hipidave/
2. http://www.bluepin.net.au/hippydave/
3. http://home.bluepin.net.au/hippydave/

here is the first edition of HTMLmanack Redux. This was the oldest entry in the archive and all that remains of the original page. I have struck out some links, i will probably put the Hanson page in another Redux, i might possibly put the post-colonialist essay up as well

March 1997

This site is here to express myself, my tastes, preferences and passions. Since I am getting so personal, I think it is fair that you have the chance to see what I look like. Here are some more photos of me.

I was born and grew up in Sydney. I moved to Armidale, an inland town with about 22,000 people, in 1993 to start a BA at the University of New England. So far I have finished 1st year: English, psychology and Aboriginal Studies.

I have some things to say about Pauline Hanson and the One Nation party.

If you like reading university essays or if you want to know some things I think about the way Aboriginal Studies is taught, have a look at my post-colonialist essay that I submitted as my final assignment for 1st year Aboriginal Studies.

So is McCain basking in the glow of the enormous success of his choice of running mate? Not. "... in the McCain camp there are growing recriminations against Mrs Palin and her public performance, which is being blamed for John McCain's decline." Wrong, choosing Palin gave him a short term blip in the polls, until the gold leaf wore off revealing a base of not silver, nor bronze, nor brass, not even a ferrous metal; a base of plastic; and there are even questions about whether it was actually gold leaf in the first place.

Is Palin's opinion of her own talents and federal political potential slightly more inflated than her hairdo? "She is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party." "Those close to Mrs Palin say she sees herself as the potential frontrunner for Republican presidential candidate in 2012." Boom-tish.
Palin goes maverick on McCain Anne Davies, Washington Correspondent, SMH, October 27, 2008

i love Freudian slips II

McCain in the third debate, "... Senator Government...Senator Obama wants government...".

it's all over bar the shouting surely?

No mooses were allegedly harmed in the proceedings.

The "Troopergate" investigation, the "Branchflower Report to the Legislative Council" has produced it's report.

A copy of the public part of the report is avaialble on the Anchorage Daily News blog site.

Interestingly it is a pdf file which is an optical scan, in other words it's not text searchable; it has to be read through to find specific information.

Ten people failed to appear before the investigation after being subpoenaed:

Department of Administration:
• Director, Personnel & Labor Relations
• Commissioner of Administration
• Director of Personnel
• Director, Division of Risk Management

&
• Governor's acting Chief of Staff
• Governor's Special Assistant, Constituent/External Affairs
• Director, Governor's Anchorage Office
• Governor's Scheduler & Executive Secretary
• Todd, "The First Gentleman"
• Governor's Deputy Chief of Staff

On 6 October the Attorney General announced that some of those above decided to appear; however, since the report was due on 10 October, their information could not be included. The report states that "It is anticipated that the additional information will be submitted to the Legislative Council in a separate report prepared by the employees and/or the Attorney General."

Palin & her sister were both requested, not subpoenaed, to give statements; both declined.

The Attorney General's Office cooperated with the investigation with the "exception" of a "failure to timely provide copies of emails and other electronic files requested some time ago."

So "Finding Number One", "Palin abused her power...". "Finding Number Four": "The Attorney General's office has failed to substantially comply with my August 6, 2008 written request to Governor Sarah Palin for information about the case in the form of emails."

The original 2005 investigation of the Trooper "was the result of a complaint... filed by... Sarah Palin's father", on the same day that Palin's sister filed for divorce against the Trooper. Keeping it all in the family? "Some of the information that resulted in the totality of allegations came from a private investigator hired by Sarah Palin's husband Todd and Sarah Palin."

"Because personnel actions are confidential by law, Department of Public Safety employees, including Colonel Grimes, were prohibited from telling those persons who had lodged allegations against Trooper Wooten, including Sarah and Todd Palin, the results of the Administrative Investigation." (the 2005 investigation). Still, Palin sent an email to Grimes asking about progress; Palin's father sent a letter to Grimes, mentioning the first email, and asking about progress; Todd phoned Grimes asking about progress; Sarah phoned Grimes asking about progress.

The 2005 investigation finished, the Trooper kept his job.

Todd phoned the Chief of Police of Wasilla (the town where Palin had been Mayor) with negative remarks about the Trooper.

Palin selected Monegan as Commissioner of Public Safety, Palin's "top cop"; from the very beginning of her role as Governor, and heaped him with praise.

The "First Gentleman", Todd, called Monegan in for a meeting in the Governor's office, about the Trooper. The transcript of Monegan's evidence to the Branchflower investigation about the meeting makes interesting reading. Todd asked Monegan to reopen the case on the Trooper, which Monegan does and finds no new evidence.

• Palin phoned Monegan about the Trooper.
• Palin talked to Monegan...
• Palin's Chief of Staff called Monegan in for a meeting.
• Todd phoned Monegan.
• The Department of Administration Commissioner phoned Monegan.
• The Department of Administration Commissioner phoned Monegan's Personal Assistant.
• The Department of Administration Commissioner's Division of Personnel phoned Monegan's Personal Assistant.
• Todd twice phoned Monegan's Personal Assistant.
• Todd twice phoned Colonel Holloway.
• The Attorney General phoned Monegan.
• Todd talked "numerous times" to the Chief of Staff of the Speaker of the House of Reps, a personal friend who had worked under Palin before.
• Frank Bailey, aide to Palin, phoned Trooper Rodney Dial.
• there were "some two dozen contacts with state employees"
• Frank Bailey phoned Deputy Commissioner John Glass.
• Todd talked to Deputy Commissioner John Glass.
• Palin cancelled an appearance at Police Memorial Day because the Trooper was used in a publicity photo.
• Palin fired Monegan.
• Todd contacted Acting Chief of Staff
• Todd contacted former Chief of Staff (10-20 times)
• Todd contacted Deputy Chief of Staff
• Pressure was applied to Harbor Adjustment Service Co. to deny a workers compensation claim from the Trooper.

Get the picture? Thankfully, the polls are showing increasing support for Obama.

A moose was harmed somewhere in the proceedings.

here's some more on Obama's lead over McCain using the Internet i mentioned in the last post.
'Besides the all-important fund-raising and get-out-the-vote categories, Obama leads McCain in virtually every conceivable "e-campaign" metric, one month away from the November 4 vote.' Obama has huge lead over McCain -- in cyberspace PhysOrg.com, October 5, 2008

• Obama:McCain
• Facebook 1,900,000:550,000
• MySpace 650,000:150,000
• Twitter 91,000:2,100
• YouTube 16,600,000:1,600,000

i've just seen the Palin clip again, where she tries to link Obama with domestic terrorism, on the evening news (SBS World News Australia in this case, although i watch a number of different channels' news). I am struck again by the intonation & double uber-shrug she used when citing the New York Times. I would guess from her political position and this tone she adopted that Palin is no fan of the NYT.

Why does this matter? I think it's another bad call from the campaign; this was no passing remark, it was used 3 times in the one day, so it was obviously the planned Sound Bite for the Day, and these seem to be coming from Palin at the moment, McCain (remember him, the presidential candidate of the pair?) has been rather quiet for a while. Anywho, it may not have been apparent to a campaign which has come a long way second on any measure of Internet savvy in this campaign, that people can go on the web to read the article, if they do it knocks holes in Palin's argument.

Palin trying to tie Obama in with a domestic terrorist organisation that was active when Obama was eight years old. Citing a New York Times article (possibly Obama and '60s Bomber: A Look Into Crossed Paths Scott Shane, NYT, October 3 2008) and isolating the one fact that aids her cause, ignoring the bulk of the article and its conclusions. Obama met Bill Ayers 26 years after the foundation of the Weathermen. "The Times report backed up Senator Obama's assertions that he is only loosely connected to Mr Ayers".
Obama slams 'shameless' Palin SMH, October 6 2008.

definitely not "palling around with terrorists"

interestingly, this mention of domestic terrorism may dilute the wingnut meme of terrorist = Muslim = terrorist = Arab = terrorist. This does tend to bring to mind the substantial number of home grown, WASP terrorists in the US

In the United States, acts of domestic terrorism are generally considered to be uncommon. According to the FBI, however, between the years of 1980 and 2000, 250 of the 335 incidents confirmed as or suspected to be terrorist acts in the United States were carried out by American citizens.

Domestic terrorism in the United States. (2008, October 5). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 03:51, October 6, 2008

Palin thinks the US is "greatest force for good in the world", what ever happened to the great religions? Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system. Dualism, us v. them. Most people like to think of themselves as "good", the trap is some then can only see all of their own actions as good.

And so much for the "maverick" team, apparently Palin is being managed by Karl Rove & his henchpersons "McCain brought in Karl Rove's team to run the campaign operation" The Perils of Pinata Politics Huffington Post, Steve Benen, August 1, 2008; Rove is one of the ickier denizens of the Bush Whitehouse.

 i love Freudian slips.

Palin, not long before closing statements in the VP debate "he [McCain] is the man we need to leave... lead" 

three cheers for Ramy Azer and his company Papyrus Australia. Azer, with three undergraduate, two masters degrees and graduate diploma has spent 12 years developing fibre products from banana tree trunks. Papyrus Australia has international patents in place and progressed past a pilot plant to building a full scale plant in Queensland, which is projected to start producing a range of papers, veneers and boards in March 2009.

"water is produced as a byproduct... Conventional paper-making, by contrast, uses 26 kilolitres, or 26,000 litres, for every tonne of paper produced..."

Going bananas for old methods Sydney Morning Herald, October 1 2008

i#39;ve changed the background "style". Goodbye "Pastel Flower", hello "Astrology". No, i#39;m not that much into astrology (although i do read it in the SMH) but it has the pretty pretty stars & nebula, and it still comes with black text on white.

thanks to a comment from Gorilla Man i have gone in and edited all the previous posts. URL (web links) are now properly clickable, i've changed the font to a more reasonable 12 point, and i've done a bit of copy editing, including layout and spelling. I have been tempted to alter the content, but have resisted; since i guess that's half the point of a blog -- it's my thoughts and comments at the time

i might also change the background, since it was not my favourite graphic design, i was really trying for black text on a white background, but i think i may be able to adjust that with the editor

i gotta say, i really  really really  am not fond of editing with a wysiwyg html editor, because you mostly end up with pretty clunky code; and i'm really faster coding raw html, especially with my favourite html editor (for the mac) Taco HTML Edit

anywho, thanks for the comments and thanks  to the people who have taken the time to read these humble jottings

Palin is looking more and more like a bad bet. McCain is a bit of a gambler: "a lifelong gambler, who favours the craps tables, and continues to play today..."
"The Republican candidate once gambled in a casino on an Indian reservation that he oversaw as chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs committee, with lobbyists who had represented that casino, according to the paper.
Former members of Mr McCain's staff said he indulged in a marathon session at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut in 2000 after he had lost the Republican presidential primary to George W Bush."
"Statistics from the non-aligned Centre for Responsive Politics show that Mr McCain is the largest recipient of money from the casino industry in Congress, outside the gambling meccas of Nevada and New Jersey..."
John McCain's gambling habit could alienate Christian Republicans UK Telegraph, Alex Spillius, 29 Sep 2008

The SMH has a bit to say at this stage:
From the Katie Couric interview, "only one of three" in a month, Palin claims that "Alaska's proximity to Russia had given her useful foreign policy experience", and she used the "V" word about Iraq.

some conservative commentators are critical and even calling for Palin to step down; one comment from Sherry Bebitch Jeffe from USC i don't buy, "The party base doesn't care about foreign policy, so it should not be too much of a concern...". I think most Americans are concerned about the tragically high cost in American lives in the Iraq campaign. And with the current economic climate, her economic record as Governor of Alaska Mayor of Wasilla [corrected 1.10.2008] does not stand her in good stead.

A month after being a sensation, Palin's now a problem Sydney Morning Herald, September 29, 2008

i missed seeing the first debate between Obama & McCain, i'm really looking forward to the debate between Biden & Palin on Thursday.

nice article at the SMH (from the Telegraph, London) about the $11 bill promised budget for a Japanese space elevator project: Scientists reach for the stars with space elevator September 24, 2008.

it would significantly reduce the, currently huge, cost of getting stuff into orbit; thousands of dollars per kilo for low earth orbit and some tens of thousands of dollars per kilo for geostationary orbit. Initial capital cost is huge, especially because we still don't have the practical materials required to build one.
Space elevator, Wikipedia

Of course somebody has thought about the space elevator concept applied to the Moon. This is even more interesting because there are designs using currently available, practical materials.
Lunar space elevator, Wikipedia

This leads to the question of economic and resource exploitation and development of the Moon. IMO we should take into consideration those people who have environmentalist reservations about mining on the moon.

We might consider any surface strip mining to be restricted to the far side of the Moon, and further we could consider any initial surface strip mining to be confined to areas that are permanently in shadow, so that even the visual aspect on the far side can be preserved. I consider the visual environment of the Moon, as perceived even naked eye from Earth mostly unchanged for millennia, to be something worth preserving.

why bother mining the moon? Most of the surface is covered in a kind of soil (no air, no water) which is around 4 metres deep on the mares or lowlands. Apart from anything else, there are iron based meteorites in there, and a certain amount of nickel, platinum and iridium etc.

it is easier to get stuff off the surface of the Moon than off the surface of Earth; establishing an industrial base to step out into the Solar system. This gives us access to raw materials that are rapidly running out on Earth plus solar energy & real estate.

there is more than peak oil to worry about, there will also be a peak platinum, peak uranium, and so on; if we stay just on Earth.

Wikipedia took me beyond the space elevator to the Launch Loop proposed design. It goes 80 km high, it is held up by its own momentum (so it's a modified Space Fountain), can be made with current materials, can launch payloads with an add-on rocket to low earth, geostationary and beyond, and promises to bring launch costs down to even cheaper than proposed space elevators.
Space fountain, Wikipedia
Launch loop, Wikipedia

maybe the launch loop concept is/could/should be applied to the moon?

So, the polls for Obama are looking quite interesting, Obama rebounds in polls as economic crisis bites September 19, 2008, Sydney Morning Herald:
"49 to 45 per cent in a new poll of likely voters nationwide by Quinnipiac University released late Thursday"
"A CBS/New York Times ... 48 per cent to 43 per cent"
"Gallup's daily tracking poll ... 48 to 44 per cent, the first time in two weeks that the Illinois senator had a lead beyond the statistical margin of error."
"A Pew Research poll ... 46 per cent and McCain on 44 per cent"
"Rasmussen's daily poll 48 per cent tie ... trend was towards Obama, who had trailed by three points just three days ago."

i found this next quite interesting, because of the implications of the number of "won't tells" + undecideds: 8% or there-abouts; amongst a section of the electorate where the figures quite suprised me. "McCain... led 71 per cent to 21 per cent among white evangelical Christians"

of course one must take into account the "turn out", the proportion of the eligible voters who do vote. A good friend of mine pointed this out to me many years ago, since the concept was a little initially foreign to an Ozzie since we have more-or-less compulsory voting here in Oz.

Apparently McCain was behind in implementation of internet based campaigning; it will be interesting to see if this has any effect on eventual turn out amongst net savvy voters.

we haven't seen the debates yet, i think there are 3 presidential candidate debates & 1 vice presidential candidate debate? I reckon Obama will do well out of these, particularly after the first one.

i think Palin is a weak link in a sub-specification chain. She took a town with a current 30 mill annual budget (7000 residents), from being in the black to 22 mill in the red over October 1996 to October 2002, there's indications of a pro-censorship standover attitude to books in the town library (not carried out but pressure was applied to the librarian who basically said that if Palin wanted a fight, the librarian would call in the civil liberties union), there was a land acquisition for a sports centre where the council wasted about 680 thou cause they didn't do the land purchasing properly before proceeding, there's the record of high turn over of staff, including her friends who have been put into plum jobs, often way over their heads in terms of qualifications required
Wasilla residents speak out on Palin's past work record Margaret Bauman, Alaska Journal of Commerce, September 14 2008

haven't i heard somewhere about McCain's kind of clunky stiffness on stage, i'm sure somebody on the news or newspapers has said "oh, poor mcC, tourtured in the war don't you know, can't lift  his arms above his shoulders" - i thought that meant, you know, any part of the arm above the shoulders, & i am happy to admit that he probably can't lift his arms straight up, but the fella could still salute after coming back from captivity in Vietnam.

Today, [ex Senator Fred] Thompson said, “John McCain can’t raise his arms above his shoulders. He can’t salute the flag of the country for which he sacrificed so much … We salute him.

GOP counts on heroic aura to lift McCain M. Charles Bakst, The Providence Journal, September 4 2008

well, about a minute in to this clip he does salute twice, at 1:02 & 1:09. Then the next guy salutes once, to the first brass but not the second person 1:17 to 1:25. McCain Returning Home From Vietnam on Youtube