apple juice

You have to admit, it was weird…

Clint Eastwood, GOP convention: The Romney campaign sells out its surprise speaker. – Slate Magazine

“They screwed up the un-screwuppable. This was like having one of the featured guests at the State of the Union drop his trousers on camera. If you botch that, how are you going to execute the more complicated constitutional duties? Mitt Romney can’t handle Clint Eastwood trying to do him a favor, and he wants to take on unfriendly negotiations with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Vladimir Putin?”

I suppose this is not going to change your opinion if you already think Obama is a socialist who believes big government is the solution, but it is worth a read…

It was a day late, but the Republicans’ parade of truth-twisting, distortions and plain falsehoods arrived on the podium of their national convention on Tuesday. Following in the footsteps of Mitt Romney’s campaign, rarely have so many convention speeches been based on such shaky foundations.

Ouch… “How the Republicans Built It“

A 20-Year Low in U.S. Carbon Emissions – NYTimes.com

“Energy-related carbon dioxide emissions in the United States from January through March were the lowest of any recorded for the first quarter of the year since 1992, the federal Energy Information Administration reports. The agency attributed the decline to a combination of three factors: a mild winter, reduced demand for gasoline and, most significantly, a drop in coal-fired electricity generation because of historically low natural gas prices. Whether emissions will continue to drop or begin to rise again, however, remains to be seen, experts said Friday.”

Great news, for what’s its worth, however…

Of course, wind and solar energy greatly outperform any fossil fuel when it comes to efficiency. But last year those sectors supplied less than 5 percent of the nation’s electricity in 2011.

Dr. Apt is among those who believes that government intervention would be needed to cut emissions to acceptable levels. “If we see more and more variability in the climate, not just droughts but also more storms, there may very well emerge a consensus that we need to finally do something to stop this very dangerous unprecedented experiment that we’re doing on the planet,” he said.

We’re way above the levels that scientists consider necessary to prevent further warming. For example, the glaciers of Glacier National Park have experienced rapid melting this year, and are expected to be gone altogether in 10 years.

We need government regulations at this point. The private sector will not steer us away from this. (Though it will be part of the solution, the innovations needed to solve this crisis will come from all sectors)

I want one of these little printers so bad, but after buying a nest and a pebble, I’m done with strange internet-connected gadgets for 2012.

Though, seriously, watch the video for the little printer. If you don’t think it is adorable, you’re not human.

This is super bad news. I would hate to see Hipstamatic disappear. This is the danger of the race to free in the app economy.

Hipstamatic Lays Off All but Core Employees, Including Designers and Engineers

Matthew Panzarino:

Toy camera app company Hipstamatic has fired all but 5 of its
core staff, including engineers and designers, The Next Web
has learned. The company had been staffed up and working on a
new release, but has only released one update in the last
several months.

(Via Daring Fireball.)

I could watch this dude all day….

Crazy dancing

Excuse the dubstep if you must, but Marquese Scott is amazing. Previously.

(via the high definite)

(Via kottke.org.)

It has been a while since I have taken the political compass test, but I love taking little tests like this. (There is a good religion one out there as well, I’ll post that when I find it)

Now first off, I obviously don’t vote this way, nor do I necessarily think that a society of this nature would even work properly. It would probably be total chaos.

If you want to read in to my score – I think what it says is this: I’m pretty libertarian about things in general, but I don’t think you can be a hypocrite about it. Too much government is not a good thing, but limited government to me means something like let people marry who they want. It means that you shouldn’t track my cell phone’s GPS without a warrant.

The socialist in me looks at things like health care and says, look, something like “insurance” works best when you have the biggest pool of insured folks, and thus, something like an individual mandate to buy health insurance makes sense. (You still get to go to whatever doctor you’d like, and it was a republican idea first, FYI) I think single-payer health care makes way MORE sense but that’s for another time.

I guess my views on things like carbon taxes, zoning rules, bike lanes, gun control, and others are really economic questions, and not social questions. I’ll have to think about that.

Anyways, if you take the test, I’d love to hear where you score and what you think!